
.■.">.•■ ''•.•■•.::.■...!■ -. ■• ■ ;■ ..:' .:,:-• ■-•■:..•. . :;■■•■ . :■ .". .■,;■;. ■:•■.■■ :^M ■>■■.-,,.', 

■ r -:v- v-'-.V:'-; ■■■:-■.=-■ ■■=■:-■,;■;: ■-»; -.■-. : ---T-.- ■■. ^ ■•■■=■■■■■..,.■•■.■ .■.■ • //iW^,y--. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 

As Seen by Herself 



BY 

FERDINAND TONNIES 

Professor at the University of Kiel ; Advising Editor of the American 

Journal of Sociology ; President of the German 

Sociological Society 



Mere cant, however seriously put forth in official statements, no 
longer blinds educated public opinion as to the facts in these 
acts of international brigandage. — W. Morgan Shuster, ex- 
Treasurer-General of Persia, The Strangling of Persia, (1912), 
p. 222. 




G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



« 



^ 



Copyright, 1915, by 
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 



Warlike England 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Co. 

New York 



OEC -I 1915 

©CI.A416660 



"Be the Government Liberal or Tory, much the same thing hap- 
pens — war with all its horrors and miseries and crimes and cost. 
Talkers and writers being mostly in favor of it, and the multitude 
approving or consenting to the wickedness in high places." (John 
Bright to a friend, 1885 Ct. Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," 
P- 437.) 

"The English nation .... is the most estimable agglomera- 
tion of human beings, considered in its relation to each other. But 
as a state in its relations with other states it is the most pernicious, 
the most violent, the greediest for power and the most bellicose of 
all." — (Immanuel Kant.) 



Foreword 


PAGE 

7 


Introduction 


11 



PART I 

THE ENGLISH WORLD POLICY UP TO THE FALL 
OF NAPOLEON 

First Division: Wars Against Spain, Against Hol- 
land, and Against France from the Sixteenth to 
the Eighteenth Century 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Expansion of England. Eliza- 
beth, Cromwell, the Restoration. 
Buccaneers 27 

II. Commerce and War — The Ethical 

Motives 37 

III. The Glories of Pitt, the Elder: Tri- 

umph over France 50 

IV. The Loss of the North American 

Colonies 53 

V. The Slave Trade as the Pillar of the 

Empire 58 

VI. The Conquest of India 62 



CONTENTS 

Second Division: War Against the French Republic 
and Against Napoleon 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VII. Attack upon the French Republic. 

The European Balance of Power . 77 

VEIL The Piratical Expedition Against Den- 
mark 83 



PART II 

THE ENGLISH WORLD POLICY IN THE NINE- 
TEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES 

Third Division: Quarrels in Three Parts of the 
Earth 

IX. Afghanistan 103 

X. The Opium War 115 

XI. The Crimean War 128 

XH. The Ionian Islands 134 

XIII. Jamaica 138 

XIV. The War of the Slave-owners in 

America 144 

XV. The Indian Mutiny 150 

Fourth Division: The Newer Imperialism 

XVI. Egypt 154 

XVII. The Boer War 170 

XVIH. Persia 182 

XIX. The World War of 1914 .... 188 

Conclusion 202 



FOREWORD 

This book has been written in the cause of 
truth. 

The testimony of the most respected English 
authors cannot be controverted. It throws 
the best light upon the existing European 
crisis. 

This book has not been written to stir up na- 
tional hatred. The author distinguishes 
sharply between the English people and the 
English world-policy. Even the leaders of 
this policy have for the most part only an in- 
complete knowledge of the driving forces be- 
hind it. 

The English folk is made up of elements 
differing greatly from one another. Besides 
the real Englishmen are Scots, Welshmen, 
Irishmen and the manifold mixtures of these 
races ; thereto are to be reckoned descendants 
of Germans, Flemings, Frenchmen, Scandina- 
vians, and others. Furthermore, character 
and habits of thought vary greatly with differ- 
ent occupations, callings and social position. 
That is to say, they are manifold and complex. 

7 



8 FOREWORD 



In England, however, more than in other 
lands, the upper classes are looked up to and 
imitated by the lower. 

The real ruling power in Great Britain and 
Ireland has for centuries been in the hands of 
the "squirearchy," as it is often termed in mod- 
ern days. This "squirearchy" permits the 
leaders of the commercial and monied aristoc- 
racy to flourish alongside it, and even takes 
them into its ranks — a procedure not synony- 
mous with the much more frequent "raising to 
the peerage." The relation is based upon the 
tacit understanding that it is England's des- 
tiny to rule and exploit the earth for the en- 
richment of these classes. 

In the last fifty years the real body of the 
people, especially the laboring class, has, 
through the press and through its parliamen- 
tary representation, won a growing influence 
over these its masters, but only in affairs of do- 
mestic policy. The foreign policy has re- 
mained the domain of the oligarchy. The 
people have only the right and the oppor- 
tunity to sit by as spectators, to applaud — and 
to hiss when the play is over. 

And ever anew the people of Great Britain 
permit themselves to listen to — and to be 
moved to applaud — the assertion that ethical 
motives govern the conduct of English world- 



FOREWORD 



policy and the incitements of wars for which 
this policy is responsible. 

Let us see how it stands with these ethical 
motives. 

THE AUTHOR. 



INTRODUCTION 

Why did England declare war on the Ger- 
man Empire? 

The King and his ministers, writers of every 
kind, in newspapers, magazines and books, 
have replied to the question with the ringing 
answer: For ethical reasons. "We fight 
Prussia in the noblest cause for which men 
can fight That cause is the public law of 
Europe, as a sure shield and buckler of all 
nations, great and small, and especially the 
small. To the doctrine of the almightiness of 
the state — to the doctrine that the means are 
justified which are, or seem, necessary to its 
self-preservation, we oppose the doctrine of 
a European society, or at least, of European 
comity of nations, within which all States 
stand; we oppose the doctrine of a public law 
of Europe, by which all States are bound to 
respect the covenants they have made. We 
will not and cannot tolerate the view that na- 
tions are "in the state and posture of gladia- 
tors" in their relations one with another; we 
stand for the reign of law. . , . We are a peo- 



iz INTRODUCTION 

pie in whose blood the cause of law is the 
vital element." * 

Thus speak the six members of the Oxford 
faculty of modern history, men who have the 
right to expect that their voice shall be heard. 
They are the spokesmen of a public opinion 
which is widespread in Great Britain. It may 
be wondered whether it is widespread in Ire- 
land. Does Ireland, too, believe that the cause 
of law is the vital element in the blood of the 
Englishman? That England assumes with 
tenderness, out of the courage of nobility, the 
protection of small nations? That it battles 
for them against militarism for the cause of 
justice? 

"England did her best to annihilate Irish 
commerce and to ruin Irish agriculture. 
Statutes passed by the jealousy of English land- 
owners forbade the export of Irish cattle or 
sheep to English ports. The export of wool 
was forbidden, lest it might interfere with the 
profits of English wool-growers. Poverty was 
thus added to the curse of misgovernment, and 
poverty deepened with the rapid growth of 
the native population, till famine turned the 
country into a hell." . . . 

"The murders and riots which sprang from 

1 "Why We Are at War ; Great Britain's Case." By mem- 
bers of the Oxford faculty of modern history, pp. 115, 116. 



INTRODUCTION 13 

time to time out of the general misery and dis- 
content were roughly repressed by the ruling 
class." . . . 

"For a while, however, the Protestant land- 
owners, banded together in 'Orange Societies,' 
held the country down by sheer terror and 
bloodshed. . . . Ireland was in fact driven in- 
to rebellion by the lawless cruelty of the 
Orange yeomanry and the English troops." 

The references are to the period preceding 
the Union (1800). Are the quotations per- 
haps taken from a handbook for Irish agita- 
tors? No, they are statements employed by an 
English historian of general repute, T. R. 
Green, M. A., one-time examiner in the school 
for modern history at Oxford. 1 

"For an Irishman it is no moral offence to 
deny the moral authority of the Act of Union. 
In my opinion the Englishman has far more 
cause to blush for the means by which that act 
was obtained." These are the words of "the 
Grand Old Man," William Ewart Gladstone, 
before a committee of Parliament in 1890. 
The reference was to the fact that the Union 
had been achieved only through monstrous 
bribery. 

X "A Short History of the English People." London, 1875, 
pp. 786-788. More than a half million copies of the book 
have been circulated in England. 



i 4 INTRODUCTION 

And what of Ireland after the Union? Ire- 
land in the nineteenth and twentieth century? 
The history of her people speaks a plain lan- 
guage. Ireland had in 1841 about 8,200,000 
inhabitants, or about 97 to the square kilo- 
meter (247.1 acres), no very dense population 
for the fruitful green island, that being about 
the same population per kilometer as that of 
Austria now. In the year 191 1, however, 70 
years later, the population of Ireland had sunk 
to about 4,400,000, a decrease of nearly one- 
half. In these 70 years the population of all 
other European lands increased steadily; in 
many it doubled or more than doubled. In 
Ireland it was halved. The density of popula- 
tion fell from 97 to 52 per square kilometer. 

Will England, with its "Union of Nations," 
operate upon the other European nations as 
it has operated upon neighboring Ireland 
through its union with that country? 

What do the other nations think of the bless- 
ings of this "European society," which is to 
be headed by England as the representative of 
justice? 

"Justice for Ireland" was Gladstone's pa- 
thetic demand. A contest of thirty years' 
duration was necessary to secure a safe ma- 
jority for a law designed to give back to the 
Irish nation the right of self-government. The 



INTRODUCTION 15 

law was finally passed — and the King of Great 
Britain and Ireland had to declare (in June, 
1914) that the country stood on the thresh- 
old of civil war. The Government was com- 
pelled to stand by and observe how the rebel- 
lion was being systematically prepared, how 
the indignation against an imperial law was 
nourished, furthered and conducted, how it 
received the approval and support of a party 
whose electoral strength in Great Britain is 
nearly equal to that of the party in power. . . . 
"We stand for the reign of law," say the edu- 
cators, who presumably belong to this party. 
And what was the meaning of this indigna- 
tion? The meaning was and is that Ireland 
is not to obtain its rights, that it is to suffer 
further under the servitude which has crushed 
and suffocated it for centuries. 

Whether the moral argument — for thus we 
may term the putting forth of ethical and le- 
gal grounds as the basis for the English world 
policy — will work convincingly upon Irish 
minds may fairly be doubted. Where people 
have not become acquainted with this policy 
in such a direct manner, or where they have 
forgotten their impressions, this argument 
will still find credence. It finds credence be- 
cause it is good, and when men are not angry 
or embittered they are readier to believe that 



16 INTRODUCTION 

the motives of others are good than that they 
are bad, in like degree as they are readier 
to impute good than bad motives to them- 
selves. 

For this reason the moral argument is espe- 
cially designed for feminine intelligences and 
finds a responsive chord there most readily, 
in part because women gladly sympathize with 
and become enthusiastic for noble motives, in 
part because even educated women seldom 
possess an exact knowledge of diplomatic con- 
ditions and still more seldom a profound 
knowledge of history. But both these branches 
of knowledge are necessary to a right judg- 
ment of the moral argument. 

The soul of a folk resembles the soul of a 
woman. It is always difficult to penetrate 
and lay bare the facts beneath the surface 
of things. For this tools and apparatus are 
needed which are not at the disposal of every 
one. 

Hamlet wonders that "one may smile and 
smile and be a villain," but Hamlet's step- 
father and uncle only keeps on smiling. Nay 
more, he also makes solemn speeches. He 
speaks of his dead brother, whom he has poi- 
soned, "with wisest sorrow." His thoughts 
have contended with his emotions. Statecraft 
demanded that he take the widowed queen as 



INTRODUCTION 17 

his wife — "with one auspicious and one drop- 
ping eye." 

Shakespeare more than once pictures with 
classic lines the hypocrite, with the honeycomb 
of upright thoughts and ethical motives upon 
his lips. 

Hypocrisy has often been termed the nation- 
al vice of the English. A noted English au- 
thor of the most modern times, Bernard Shaw, 
says in his article on the present war: 

"We know that even in circles that are most 
friendly to the English nation an opinion is 
going abroad that our excellent qualities 
are being disfigured by an incorrigible hypoc- 
risy." 

He is of the opinion that this reputation 
cannot have arisen entirely without ground. 
In particular, he considers it to be founded 
on the attitude of English statesmen. As a 
type in this connection he names Sir Edward 
Grey. 

In reality, the conscious, shameless hypo- 
crite, who deliberately and continuously plays 
a comedy, is a rare figure. The role of an hon- 
orable man is so hard for a base man, that of 
a severely moral man is so hard for a TartufTe, 
that, in life as well as on the stage, he is usually 
very speedily unmasked. 

Much more frequent, because much easier, 



18 INTRODUCTION 

is the half-conscious or even the quarter-con- 
scious hypocrisy, the conduct of the man gov- 
erned not by very evil, but by mediocre, com- 
mon and unbeautiful motives, and who under- 
stands how to disguise these motives with glit- 
tering finery and adorn them with pious and 
virtuous speeches. The basis of this is fre- 
quently a mixture of praiseworthy shame with 
reprehensible dissimulation, for, as Lord Ba- 
con fittingly remarks in one of his essays, 
nakedness of mind, like nakedness of body, is 
unseemly. One may add to this that even in 
the case of clothes designed to conceal 
thoughts, more weight is laid upon their pleas- 
ing other people than upon their being genu- 
ine and worthy. In like manner the wise man 
imposes holy and apparently natural wrinkles 
upon his face, which can so easily betray his 
real thoughts, rather than to tie before it an 
uncomfortable mask which can deceive only 
from afar. Practice makes perfect here also, 
and habit becomes second nature. 

This remarkable mixture of shame and 
hypocrisy is entirely alien to no individual, 
certainly to no nation. But it is a noteworthy 
fact that precisely in the English nation, which 
is not without strength and greatness in evil 
as well as in good, there is to be found a 
marked inclination and talent for it, and that 



INTRODUCTION 19 

English politicians, who may be upright and 
honorable men in private life, show themselves 
in state affairs to be masters of that art 
which Socrate9 branded as the particular 
art of the Sophists — that of making the bad 
cause appear the better by devious, involved 
speeches. 

It i9 hardly an accident that the English 
language has found a special, untranslatable 
word for this peculiar attitude of mind, which 
finds its purest expression in twisted but high- 
sounding words, designed to disguise motives. 
This is the word "cant," which philologists 
derive from the Latin cantus (song), as if a 
singsong manner of delivery favored this man- 
ner of speaking, which is essentially so deeply 
insincere, and yet half believed by the speaker 
himself. For cant possesses also this peculiar 
attribute: The oftener it is repeated, or the 
louder it is proclaimed, by so much more i9 
it not only believed and enthusiastically ac- 
cepted, but even those who first gave it cur- 
rency believe it themselves, and continue to 
assert it with greater assurance and, therefore, 
with greater effect 

The English themselves, among whom the 
truth-loving man is by no means rare, have not 
lacked a realization of this shamefaced hypoc- 
risy (as one may perhaps translate cant). 



20 INTRODUCTION 

Lord Byron repeatedly expressed himself witK 
repugnance and bitterness concerning it. 1 A' 
special treatise concerning cant, published in 
1887 by Sidney Whitman, 2 gave occasion for 
much comment. Even the most zealous advo- 

1 Countess of Blessington. Conversations with Lord Byron, 
passim. 

2 "Conventional Cant, Its Result and Remedy." London, 
1887. The title and the name of the author had escaped my 
memory. After I had finished this work I found both in 
Moritz Busch's "Leaves From My Diary," III, p. 221. Busch 
wrote — at Prince Bismarck's orders, as ever — two articles in 
the Grenzboten, entitled "An Evil Spirit in the England of To- 
day."^ (Grenzboten, 1888, p. 377 et seq., p. 533 et seq.) I find 
therein (p. 534) the following sentence, which is in perfect 
agreement with my own conception: "The expression cant 
means, then, untruthfulness, but joined to the feeling that 
one is truthful or is telling the truth; the deceiving of others 
which is at the same time a self-deception." I learn also 
that Carlyle described cant as the art of making things appear 
to be what they are not, "an art of such deadly nature that 
it deadens the very soul of those who employ it by leading 
them beyond the stage of conscious falsehood to a point where 
they believe in their own mad representations, and brings 
themdown to the most miserable condition conceivable, where 
one is honestly dishonest." Carlyle is reported to have ex- 
claimed on one occasion (the exact passage is not given) : 
"Cant, thou curse of our nation!" I have thus far been unable 
to get hold of Whitman's book. But I just discover an ad- 
mirable article upon "Cant" in the New Statesman of Jan- 
uary 23, 1915 (vol. iv, No. 94). Cant is defined therein as 
"the singsong of the self-righteous." "It is praise and prayer 
from the nose instead of from the heart. ... It enables us 
to cut a presentable figure before our neighbors, and not only 
to deceive ourselves, but to deceive ourselves into the belief 
that we are deceiving others. England is supposed by many 
people to be the world's factory of cant, and her annual pro- 
duction of the article certainly reaches a creditable figure." 
The writer believes, however, that if Germany should win 
the war, she would become the leading exporter of cant among 
the nations of Europe. 



INTRODUCTION 211 

cates of the English claims to be the first na- 
tion of the world must confess that a peculiar 
condition exists in regard to cant. But no one 
believes that cant can be exterminated. It has 
always flourished in foreign politics and in 
war. Lord Cromer, one of the most respected 
men of the country (although of German 
descent, from the Baring family), only re- 
cently referred to the phrase, "the British 
spirit of fair play," as "the cant phrase of 
the day." 1 

That the storms of the present war (1914) 
are throwing up whole mountains of cant on 
the strand of the literature of the day cannot 
in the least be wondered at. The book of the 
six Oxford scholars has already been men- 
tioned. Even as earnest and able a weekly 
magazine as The New Statesman (conducted 
by Mr. Sidney Webb and Mrs. Beatrice 
Webb-Potter) published on October 24th an 
extended article on the question: "Why did 
we embark on the war?" and the answer was: 
"Because of Belgium and out of moral rea- 
sons," whereupon a correspondent (Mr. Sad- 
ler) raised objections in the following num- 
ber and remarked: "The answer savors of 
hypocrisy." 

Of course it does. Cant always savors of 

1 Lord Cromer, Essays, p. 9. 



22 INTRODUCTION 

hypocrisy, even if it is not intended to be utter, 
shameless hypocrisy. But the article referred 
to was quite right in declaring that Sir Ed- 
ward Grey's cant concerning the breach of 
Belgian neutrality and England's sacred duty 
to intervene on Belgium's behalf won public 
opinion for the war. Public opinion in Eng- 
land is wonderfully responsive to cant. It is 
like a musical automat — one needs only to 
throw a cant phrase into the slot and the in- 
strument begins to grind out a highly moral 
melody. 

"In the political literature of Europe four 
qualities are ascribed to England. It is as- 
serted that England is, in the highest questions 
of public policy, fickle, proud, selfish and 
quarrelsome." * Thus declares a modern Eng- 
lish author, the descendant of a famous family 
of politicians. He ought not to have forgot- 
ten the fifth quality which rounds out the char- 
acter drawing of England's world policy — the 
habitual cant, the peculiar spice of those other 
qualities so aptly described. 

A single sentiment lies at the bottom of all 
these qualities. It is fear — the English states- 
men call it foresight and watchfulness — the 
fear of thieves or beggars that forms a psy- 
che Honorable George Peel: "The Enemies of England," 
London, 1902, pp. 8, 9. 



INTRODUCTION 



chological weakness of many rich people, the 
fear of being outdone by competitors, so well 
known to every business-man. 

But are our judgments not determined by 
partisanship? Is it not hostility that pictures 
English policy in such a light? Does not his- 
tory show that England has battled for justice 
and freedom, that, with the bravery of a lion, 
it has made the cause of the small and weak 
states of the earth its own cause? And that, 
therefore, its world policy has been dictated 
by ethical motives? 

To answer these questions we will open the 
books of history. We will not call as witnesses 
historians who might possibly be open to sus- 
picion, we will not call foreign historians, who 
might be infected with the hatred against po- 
litical England, but we will call English his- 
torians, and by preference men whose authori- 
tativeness is not denied in England, men who 
hold the first rank as investigators and think- 
ers. 

In line with this, I place at the head of these 
witnesses the author of the works concerning 
"The Expansion of England," and "The 
Growth of British Policy," Sir J. R. Seeley. 
The former of these two works shall serve us 
as the basis for judging the motives of the Eng- 
lish world policy. Seeley was knighted for 



24 INTRODUCTION 

his services as a scholar and was otherwise 
the recipient of the highest distinctions. 

Not that Seeley fought against the foresee- 
ing militaristic tendencies — popularly termed 
Jingoism — of the last decades. Quite the con- 
trary. A prominent Swedish historian (Har- 
ald Hjarne) terms him "the Herald of Im- 
perialism, " and thinks that he can be consid- 
ered as an English Treitschke. His authority 
in his own land, however, is much higher than 
is the authority of Treitschke in the German 
countries. Lord Cromer, "the Egyptian," for 
instance, calls Seeley, Gibbon, Guizot, 
Mommsen and Milman "the most able writers 
and thinkers the world has produced." In like 
manner Joseph Chamberlain, in one of his 
speeches in Parliament, asserted that "our 
greatest thinkers and writers have put this 
problem (of Greater Britain) before us," and 
named as such Seeley, Froude and Lecky. 

In English writings — statements by 
Treitschke are cited and joined in absurd 
manner with quotations from Nietzsche and 
Bernhardi in order to demonstrate how belli- 
cose (or "chauvanistic" or "militaristic") the 
sentiment of the Germans is to-day. 

It is not in this sense that we will adduce 
statements of Seeley and other distinguished 
authors. The sentiments of our authorities 



INTRODUCTION 25 

are matters of indifference to us. It is only 
to banish the suspicion that we have sought 
out such men as are unfriendly to England and 
its policies that we call attention to the fact 
that Seeley is an imperialistic historian. The 
same is true of W. H. Lecky, to whom we have 
several times referred. His name is favorably 
known in the United States, in Germany, in- 
deed, everywhere, as that of one of the most 
learned and prominent writers. 

A somewhat different significance attaches 
to Justin McCarthy, who, next to Seeley, will 
be most frequently called as a witness. This 
is necessary because of the fact that for the 
period covered by the reign of Queen Vic- 
toria ( 1 837-1900) there is no other work that 
enjoys such great popularity and such regard 
in England as the "History of Our Own 
Times," with its three divisions, (1) up to 1880, 
(2) 1880-1897, (3) 1897-1900. "Easily and 
delightfully written and on the whole eminent- 
ly sane and moderate, these volumes form a 
brilliant piece of narrative from a Liberal 
standpoint." This is the characterization of 
this history in the new edition of the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica, vol. xvii, p. 201. 

The other witnesses speak for themselves. 
In addition to historians (in whose number 
are reckoned also the authors of works on cus- 



26 INTRODUCTION 

toms of living), other witnesses will occasion- 
ally be called for the better characterization 
of criticisms that deserve to be made better 
known, either because of their general circu- 
lation or because of the authoritative standing 
of the critics. 

It suffices here to name Richard Price, Her- 
bert Spencer, Gladstone, John Morley (Glad- 
stone's biographer), John Bright, G. M. 
Trevelyan (Bright's biographer), Lord Cro- 
mer, and V. S. Blunt; among the historians, 
James Mill (also known as a philosopher), 
Kaye, Malleson, G. O. Trevelyan and Hol- 
land Rose. 

All these authorities are ornaments of the 
English nation or of its literature and schol- 
arship. 

Use has been made in other places of the 
Dictionary of National Biography and the last 
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The 
articles cited from these monumental works 
are from the pens of the best authorities in 
their subjects. 



PART I 

THE ENGLISH WORLD POLICY 

UP TO THE FALL OF 

NAPOLEON 

First Division: Wars Against Spain, 
Against Holland, and Against France, 
From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth 
Century 

CHAPTER I 

THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. ELIZABETH, 
CROMWELL, THE RESTORATION. BUCCANEERS 

"Between the Revolution and the Battle of 
Waterloo it may be reckoned that we waged 
seven great wars, of which the shortest lasted 
seven years, and the longest about twelve. Out 
of a hundred and twenty-six years, sixty-four 
years, or more than half, were spent in war." 
(Seeley, p. 24.) 

Of the seven wars of this period, "five are 
wars with France from the beginning, and 

27 



28 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

both the other two, though the belligerent at 
the outset was in the first Spain and in the 
second our own colonies, yet became in a 
short time and ended as wars with France. 7 ' 

( P . 28.) 

After the seven-year pause that followed the 
War of the Spanish Succession the following 
wars can almost be regarded as a single con- 
flict. "I say these wars make one grand and 
decisive struggle between England and 
France." (p. 31.) 

"The expansion of England in the New 
World and in Asia is the formula which sums 
up for England the history of the eighteenth 
century. . . . The great triple war of the 
middle of that century (1744-1763) is neither 
more nor less than the great decisive duel be- 
tween England and France for the possession 
of the New World." (p. 33.) "We had a 
competitor in the work of settlement, a com- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 29 

petitor who in some respects had got the start 
of us, namely France." (p. 35.) 

"The statement that expansion is the chief 
character of English history in the eighteenth 
century . . . means that the European policy 
and the colonial policy are but different as- 
pects of the same great national development." 
(p. 42.) 

Seeley also occasionally glances backward 
to the history of the time preceding this pe- 
riod, to the British ancien regime. 

"It seems to us clear that we are the great 
wandering, working, colonizing race, descend- 
ed from sea-rovers and Vikings. The sea, we 
think, is ours by nature's decree, and on this 
highway we travel to subdue the earth and to 
people it." (p. 94.) In reality, "the mari- 
time greatness of England is of much more 
modern growth than most of us imagine. It 
dates from the civil wars of the seventeenth 



3 o WARLIKE ENGLAND 

century and from the career of Robert Blake." 

(P- 95-) 
"There are no doubt naval heroes older 

than Blake. There i9 Francis Drake and 
Richard Grenville and John Hawkins. But 
the navy of Elizabeth was only the English 
navy in infancy, and the heroes themselves are 
not far removed from buccaneers." (p. 96.) 

"From this point of view from which we 
here regard English history, the great occur- 
rence of the seventeenth century before 1688 
is not the Civil War or the execution of the 
King, but the intervention of Cromwell in the 
European War. This act may almost be re- 
garded as the foundation of the English 
World Empire." (p. 130.) The first Stuarts 
directed their gaze more upon the Old World 
than upon the New. "But the reaction comes 
to an end with the accession to power of the 
party of the Commonwealth. A policy now 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 31 

begins which is not, to be sure, very scrupu- 
lous, but is able, resolute and successful. It is 
oceanic and looks westward, like the policy of 
the latter years of Elizabeth." (p. 131.) The 
colonial policy of Cromwell is chiefly in- 
teresting because Charles II was guided by 
it in the direction of his own course. 
"Moral rectitude is hardly a characteristic of 
it, and if it is religious, this perhaps would 
have appeared, had the protectorate lasted 
longer, to have been its most dangerous fea- 
ture. Nothing is more dangerous than im- 
perialism marching with an idea on its ban- 
ner, and Protestantism was to our Emperor 
Oliver what the ideas of the Revolution were 
to Napoleon and his nephew." (p. 133.) "We 
may well, I think, shudder at the thought of 
the danger which was removed by the fall of 
the protectorate." (p. 134.) 

This imperialist policy developed princi- 



32 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

pally in regard to the New World. "Here, 
indeed, Cromwell's policy . . . has a peculi- 
arly absolute and unscrupulous tinge. Of his 
own pure will, without consulting directly 
or indirectly the people, and in spite of oppo- 
sition in his council, he plunges the country 
into a war with Spain. This war is com- 
menced after the manner of the old Elizabeth- 
an by a sudden descent, without previous quar- 
rel or declaration of war, upon San Domin- 
go." (p. 134.) Sir J. Stephen once told his 
auditors that "if they had a taste for icono- 
clasm he could recommend them to employ 
it upon the buccaneering Cromwell." (ibid.) 
It was not, however, the war with Spain that 
was most characteristic of this period and the 
period following, but the war with Holland. 
"If Cromwell's breach with Spain shows most 
strikingly by its violent suddenness the spirit 
of the new commercial policy, yet it is capable 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 33 

of being misinterpreted." (p. 135.) It might 
be thought it had been directed against Spain 
as the great Catholic power. "It is the great 
proof that this cause is fast giving way to the 
other, viz., the great trade-rivalry produced 
by the New World, that all through the mid- 
dle of the seventeenth century England and 
Holland wage great naval wars of a character 
such as had never been seen before." (ibid.) 
Charles II is often condemned for the 
boundless unprincipledness of his foreign 
policy. In reality, however, he was only fol- 
lowing the examples set by the Republic and 
by Cromwell. Because of this his Govern- 
ment was supported by some people who had 
inherited the traditions of the Republic. "An- 
thony Ashley Cooper, a man of Cromwellian 
ideas, supported it by quoting the old words, 
delenda est Carthago. In other words: 'Hol- 
land is our great rival in trade, on the ocean 



34 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

and in the New World. Let us destroy her, 
though she be a Protestant power; let us de- 
stroy her with the help of a Catholic power.' " 
(p. 136.) "Those were the maxims of the 
Commonwealth and of the Protector, who, 
though Puritans, had understood that the riv- 
alry of the maritime powers for trade and em- 
pire in the New World was taking the place of 
the struggle of the churches as the question of 
the day." (ibid.) 

The result was conquest. Thus, under 
Cromwell, Jamaica was won from Spain, and 
Bombay was taken from Portugal and New 
York from Holland under Charles. 

One sees that this historian, who does not 
conceal his enthusiasm for a "Greater Bri- 
tain" (as much as he endeavors to judge ob- 
jectively), ascribes the foundation of the em- 
pire to men whom he describes as "buc- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 35 

caneers." This comparison does not appear 
here for the first time. Thus, for instance, in 
a booklet 1 written in 1837, glorifying voyages 
of exploration, appears this passage: "Al- 
though the name (buccaneers), linked to one 
virtue and a thousand crimes, is of much later 
date than the era of Drake and his daring fol- 
lower Oxenham, yet is there no violation of 
truth in ascribing to them the character which 
it signified, of indiscriminate plunder by sea 
and land, in peace and in war." 

The real buccaneers, "a designation too soon 
stained with every species of crime and ex- 
cess," belong to the seventeenth century. They 
are also known under the name of "filibus- 
ters," and called themselves "brothers of the 
coast." 

The conduct of English warships towards 

1 "Lives and Voyages of Drake, Cavendish and Dampier, 
Including a View of the History of the Buccaneers," London, 
1837, p. 183. 



36 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

neutral trading vessels, from that day to the 
present time, has successfully carried on the 
traditions of the "brothers of the coast." An 
admission of this, even though not in so many 
words, is to be found in Seeley's writings. 

This rule of conduct led to war with Den- 
mark in 1800, to war with the United States 
in 1 81 2 and to a sharp conflict with the same 
country in 1841. The English policy has thus 
far held it incompatible with its interests to 
respect private property in time of war. 



CHAPTER II 

COMMERCE AND WAR. THE ETHICAL MOTIVES 

More and more, then, the expeditions of the 
freebooters were succeeded by naval warfare; 
at first the war against Holland, then the 
great contest with France for the New World. 
The climax of Seeley's descriptions is the 
emphasizing of the significance of the latter 
contest. He considered it as affording a clear- 
ly visible example of the fact "that the expan- 
sion of England has been neither a tranquil 
process nor yet belonging purely to the most 
recent times; that throughout the eighteenth 
century that expansion was an active principle 
of disturbance, a cause of wars unparalleled 
both in magnitude and number." (p. 125.) 

Of what sort were the causes and the motives 
37 



38 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

of these wars? Let us hear the answer of the 
philosophic historian to this question. 

"It seems to me to be the principal charac- 
teristic of this phase of England that she is at 
once commercial and warlike." (p. 127.) 

"The wars of the eighteenth century were 
incomparably greater and more burdensome 
than those of the Middle Ages. In a lesser 
degree those of the seventeenth century were 
also great. These are precisely the centuries 
in which England grew more and more a com- 
mercial country. England indeed grew ever 
more warlike at that time as she grew more 
commercial. And it is not difficult to show 
that a cause was at work to make war and com- 
merce increase together. This cause is the old 
colonial system" (p. 128), the essential feature 
of which is "that it placed the colony in the 
position, not so much of a state in federation, 
as of a conquered state." (p. 77.) "Com- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 39 

merce in itself may favor peace, but when 
commerce is artificially shut out by a decree 
of government from some promising territory, 
then commerce just as naturally favors war. 
We know this by our own recent experience 
with China." 1 (p. 128.) The old colonial 
system "carved out the New World into terri- 
tories, which were regarded as estates, to be 
enjoyed in each case by the colonizing nation. 
The hope of obtaining such splendid estates 
and of enjoying the profits that were reaped 
from them constituted the greatest stimulus 
to commerce that had ever been known, and 
it was a stimulus which acted without inter- 
mission for centuries. . . , But inseparable 
from the commercial stimulus was the stimu- 
lus of international rivalry. The object of 
each nation was now to increase its trade, not 



1 This, of course, refers to the Opium War, and the troubles 
that followed it. (See Chap. X.) 



4 o WARLIKE ENGLAND 

by waiting upon the wants of mankind, but by 
a wholly different method, namely, by getting 
exclusive possession of some rich tract in the 
New World. Now whatever may be the natu- 
ral opposition between the spirit of trade and 
the spirit of war, trade pursued in this method 
is almost identical with war, and can hardly 
fail to lead to war. What is conquest but ap- 
propriation of territory? Now appropriation 
of territory under the old colonial system be- 
came the first national object. The five na- 
tions of the West were launched into an eager 
competition for territory — that is, they were 
put into a relation with each other in which 
the pursuit of wealth naturally led to quarrels, 
a relation in which, as I said, commerce and 
war were inseparably entangled together, so 
that commerce led to war and war fostered 
commerce. The character of the new period 
which was thus opened showed itself very 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 41, 

early. Consider the nature of that long, desul- 
tory war of England with Spain, of which the 
expedition of the Armada was the most strik- 
ing incident. I have said that the English sea 
captains were very like buccaneers, and indeed 
to England the war was throughout an indus- 
try, a way to wealth, the most thriving busi- 
ness, the most profitable investment, of the 
time. That Spanish war is, in fact, the infancy 
of English foreign trade. The first generation 
of Englishmen that invested capital, put it 
into that war. As now we put our money into 
railways, or what not, so then the keen men 
of business took shares in the new ship which 
John Oxenham or Francis Drake was fitting 
out at Plymouth and which was intended to 
lie in wait for the treasure galleons, or make 
raids upon the Spanish towns upon the Gulf of 
Mexico. And yet the two countries were 
formally not even at war with each other. It 



42 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

was thus that the system of monopoly in the 
New World made trade and war indistin- 
guishable from each other. The prosperity of 
Holland was the next and a still more startling 
illustration of the same law. W^iat more ruin- 
ous, you say, than a long war, especially to a 
small state? And yet Holland made her for- 
tune in the world by a war of some eighty year9 
with Spain. How was this? It was because 
war threw open to her attack the whole bound- 
less possessions of her antagonist in the New 
World, which would have been closed to her 
in peace. By conquest she made for herself 
an empire, and this empire made her rich." 
(pp. 128-130.) 

England followed in Holland's footsteps. 
The alliance followed the war against Hol- 
land. Both states made common cause against 
the newly developing colonial power of 
France. Colbert's ministry meant the delib- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 43 

erate entrance of France into the competition 
of the western states for the New World. The 
union of the two sea powers, which made Wil- 
liam of Orange King of England, was appar- 
ently dictated by the common Protestant in- 
terests as opposed to the Catholic reaction 
which had reached its climax in the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. This motive also 
made itself felt directly at the very outset. A 
backward glance at the events culminating in 
the Peace of Utrecht ( 171 3) furnishes the cor- 
rect point of view of the more powerful and 
deeper lying motives, for in the draft of this 
treaty of peace the Spanish War of Succession 
betrays "its intensely commercial character." 

(P- 151.) 

"In reality it is the most businesslike of all 
our wars, and it was waged in the interest of 
English and Dutch merchants whose trade and 
livelihood were at stake." (p. 152.) The 



44 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

threatened union of the Spanish Empire with 
France would have closed nearly the whole 
New World to England and Holland. The 
French began to explore the Mississippi and 
to make settlements. "Behind all the courtly 
foppery of the grand siecle, commercial con- 
siderations now ruled the world as they had 
never ruled it before, and as they continued 
to rule it through much of the prosaic cen- 
tury that was then opening." (p. 152.) The 
Peace of Utrecht denotes one of the greatest 
epochs in the history of England's expansion. 
England was now the greatest state in the 
world, and remained for many years without 
a rival. Holland's decline became notice- 
able. France was lamed for a time. Eng- 
land's actual gain was, in addition to Gibral- 
tar, Minorca, New Scotland and Newfound- 
land, and the notorious Assiento, that treaty 
of state which conferred upon the English 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 45 

merchant a monopoly of the slave trade in 
Spanish America. England's colonial empire 
was, in extent, unimportant in comparison 
with that of France, and even with that of 
Portugal. France was also superior in many 
respects. Her colonial policy appeared to be 
more successful. England's rivalry now di- 
rects itself against Spain and France, but 
chiefly against France, England's neighbor in 
America and India. 

The decisive event in the great duel be- 
tween England and France is the Seven 
Years' War, and the new attitude which Eng- 
land assumes as a consequence of the Paris 
Peace of 1762. "Here is the culminating 
point of English power in the eighteenth 
century; nay, relatively to other states, Eng- 
land has never since been so great." (p. 
160.) "In this culminating phase England 
becomes an object of jealousy and dread to all 



46 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

Europe, as Spain and afterwards France had 
been in the seventeenth century." (p. 161.) 

We have seen that this culminating point 
had been reached by a long series of wars. All 
these were wars of aggression. No matter of 
what nature the pretexts or the immediate ex- 
ternal causes which led England to carry on 
these wars, no matter how these pretexts and 
causes differed one from the other, they are 
all of the same nature — commercial interests, 
desire for commercial gain, commercial jeal- 
ousy, envy and mistrust of competitors. 

This is shown us by the dispassionate judg- 
ment of Sir. J. R. Seeley, which assuredly is 
not colored to the disadvantage of his own 
fatherland. On the whole, he refrains from 
proposing moral judgments. He seeks not to 
praise or to judge, but to comprehend. Since, 
however, he speaks continually of England's 
power and greatness, he expressly asserts that 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 47 

it is no part of his intention "either to glorify 
the conquests made, or to justify the means 
adopted by our countrymen." (p. 155.) He 
shows how England defeated her four rivals 
in the contest for the New World, but he has 
not the smallest intention of claiming for Eng- 
land superior ability or bravery because of 
these victories. He does not wish to encour- 
age his readers to admire Drake or Hawkins, 
the Republic under Cromwell, or even the 
government of Charles II. "Indeed, it is not 
easy to approve the conduct of those who built 
up Greater Britain, though there is plenty to 
admire in their achievements, and much less 
certainly to blame or to shudder at than in 
the deeds of the Spanish adventurers." (p. 
156.) He considers the matter "in order to 
discover the laws by which States rise, expand 
and prosper or fall in this world." (ibid.) He 
desires also to throw light upon the question 



48 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

of whether the Greater Britain, now that it 
exists, is likely to continue to flourish and en- 
dure or fall into decay. "Perhaps you may 
ask (the teacher is addressing his students) 
whether we can expect or wish it to prosper, if 
crime has gone to the making of it!' (ibid.) 
But God, he says, as He has revealed Him- 
self in history, does not usually judge in this 
way. Out of illegal acquisitions of territory 
by a state does not arise the probability that 
such territory will again be lost." If we com- 
pare the British Empire with other empires in 
respect of its origin, we shall see that it has 
arisen in the same way; that its founders have 
had the same motives, and these not mainly 
noble; that they have displayed much fierce 
covetousness, mixed with heroism; that they 
have not been much troubled by moral scru- 
ples, at least in their dealings with enemies and 
rivals, though they have often displayed vir- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 49 

tuous self-denial in their dealings among 
themselves." (p. 157.) He believes that, in 
comparison with other empires, a good rather 
than a bad testimonial can be given the Eng- 
lish ; the Spanish, especially, are incomparably 
more stained with cruelty and covetousness. 
One finds noble traits also in the history of the 
British Conquistadores. "Their crimes, on the 
other hand, are such as have been almost uni- 
versal in colonization." (p. 157.) 

It is probable that the Spaniards, French 
and Dutch will reach a somewhat different 
conclusion as the result of a consideration of 
these mutual crimes. 



CHAPTER III 

THE GLORIES OF PITT, THE ELDER. TRIUMPH 
OVER FRANCE 

At this period the elder Pitt, since 1766 
Earl of Chatham, had reached the height of 
success and influence, albeit the popularity 
consequent thereon did not survive his eleva- 
tion to the peerage. He had carried through 
the war against France, against continuous and 
powerful opposition and despite initial fail- 
ures in America and in Germany, where he 
had the most gifted military leader of the age 
(Frederick the Great) fighting for him. His 
declaration that he would conquer America 
in Germany, is generally known. "Not con- 
tent therefore, to have almost annihilated the 

fleets of France, he desired to deprive her of 

50 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 51 

all her colonial empire, and also of all partici- 
pation in that Newfoundland fishery which 
he described as the great nursery of her sailors. 
Some time ago he (Pitt) said in the midst of 
his triumphs: 'I would have been content to 
bring France to her knees; now I will not rest 
till I have laid her on her back.' He once con- 
fessed, with a startling frankness, that he loved 
'an honorable war.' He never appears to have 
had any adequate sense of the misery it pro- 
duces." 1 

Lecky emphasizes the fact that Pitt, in his 
love of war, was in full accord with the wishes 
of his people. He had made it his aim to con- 
sider patriotism as signifying an increase of 
power as opposed to "the inevitable and natu- 
ral enemy" (France), and the putting of an 
end to the weakness, anarchy and corruption of 
which, according to his opinion, recent Eng- 

1 Lecky, "A History of the Eighteenth Century," II, p. 512. 



52 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

lish politics was full. "He considered the 
selfishness, incapacity, intrigues and jealousies 
of the great nobles as being the main cause of 
those evils." * To crown his fatherland with 
the glory of war was his aim and his accomp- 
lishment. With complete deliberation he 
made his policy serve the interests of trade. 
"British policy is British trade," was his 
motto. 

1 Lecky, III, p. in. After the fall of Pitt his successor, Lord 
Bute, left Prussia in the lurch (1762). Pitt characterized this 
as deceitful, dishonest and treacherous. Bute and his King at 
the same time offered East Prussia to the Tsarina and Silesia 
to the Kaiserin as the price of peace. J. R. Green calls this 
"shameless indifference toward our national honor," and de- 
clares that only by fortunate accidents was England preserved 
from this debasement ("Short History," p. 743.) 



CHAPTER IV 

THE LOSS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES 

The splendid and victorious development 
of the British colonial empire in the eight- 
eenth century did not, however, proceed with- 
out interruption. There came a setback, a sud- 
den convulsion, whose far-reaching conse- 
quences were not comprehended when it oc- 
curred — the loss of the American colonies, 
which constituted nearly the entire colonial 
empire at that time. "Like a bubble, Greater 
Britain expanded rapidly and then burst. It 
has since been expanding again. Can we avoid 
the obvious inference?" (Seeley, p. 176.) 

Seeley rejects this deduction, for the reason 

that the old colonial system, which treated a 

colony as a slave, was responsible for the 

53 



54 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

American Revolution. No new, well thought 
out system has as yet taken its place, accord- 
ing to Seeley. He declares the only correct 
system to be one which makes the colonies 
parts of England, as opposed to the former 
method of considering them possessions of 
England and treating them as such. 

In the words of Edmund Burke (in his fa- 
mous speech concerning American taxation, 
on April 19, 1774), the colonial policy was 
from the beginning exclusively commercial, 
and the commercial system was the system of 
a monopoly. "No trade was let loose from 
that constraint but merely to enable the colo- 
nists to dispose of what, in the course of your 
trade, you could not take, or to enable them 
to dispose of such articles as are forced upon 
them, and for which, without some degree of 
liberty, they could not pay. . . . This princi- 
ple of commercial monopoly runs through no 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 55 

Ies9 than twenty-nine Acts of Parliament from 
the year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 
1764." Burke terms America's condition dur- 
ing this period one of civil liberty and com- 
mercial servitude. 

At the same time Richard Price wrote his 
"Observations on the nature of civil liberty, 
the principles of government, and the justice 
and policy of the war with America." (7th 
ed. r London, 1776.) The booklet went into 
many editions, was translated into nearly all 
European languages, and evoked more than 
sixty replies. It is a flaming arraignment of 
the English world policy of that period. 

"The disgrace to 'which a kingdom must sub- 
mit by making concessions is nothing to that 
of being the aggressor in an unrighteous 
quarrel. 

"The quarrel with America is disgraceful 
to us because inconsistent with our feeling in 



56 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

similar cases. . . . This war is disgraceful on 
account of the persuasion which led to it, and 
under which it has been undertaken: the gen- 
eral cry was last winter that the people of New 
England were a body of cowards, who could 
at once be reduced to submission by a hostile 
look from our troops. . . . The manner in 
which this war has been hitherto conducted 
renders it still more disgraceful. English 
valor being thought insufficient to subdue the 
colonies, the laws and religion of France were 
established in Canada on purpose to obtain the 
power of bringing upon them from thence an 
army of French Papists. The wild Indians 
and their own slaves have been instigated to 
attack them, and attempts have been made to 
gain the assistance of a large body of Russians. 
With like views German troops have been 
hired; and the defence of our forts and gar- 
risons trusted in their hands." 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 57 

The modern English historians, in complete 
accord with Price, depict the traffic in sol- 
diers, which has been rightly regarded as the 
disgrace of German princes, as a disgrace 
which fell in no less degree upon Great Britain 
and strongly embittered the feelings of the 
colonists. 1 

1 Lecky: "A History of England in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury," ch. 12. Sir G. O. Trevelyan: "The American Revolu- 
tion," Part II, vol. i, pp. 34-56. 



CHAPTER V 

THE SLAVE TRADE AS THE PILLAR OF THE 
EMPIRE 

Seeley deals with the slave trade in connec- 
tion with his consideration of the "crimes" 
with which the English colonial empire (like 
the Spanish and other colonial empires) was 
built up. He calls it "the greatest of these 
crimes." "England had taken some share in 
the slave trade as early as Elizabeth's age, 
when John Hawkins distinguished himself as 
the first Englishman who stained his hands 
with its atrocity. You will find in Hakluyt 1 ' 
his own narrative, how he came in 1567 upon 
an African town, of which the huts were cov- 

1 "Hakluyt: The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques 
and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or on 
Land," London, 1598; 2 vols. 

58 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 59 

ered with dry palm leaves, how he set fire to it, 
and out of '8,000 inhabitants succeeded in seiz- 
ing 250 persons, men, women and children.' " 
(p. 158.) . . . "Like our colonial empire it- 
self, our participation in the slave trade was 
the gradual growth of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. By the Treaty of Utrecht it was, as it 
were, established, and became 'a central object 
of English policy'. 1 From this date I am 
afraid we took the leading share, and stained 
ourselves beyond other nations in the mon- 
strous and enormous atrocities of the slave 
trade." (ib.) This sin was somewhat miti- 
gated by the fact "that we published our own 
guilt, repented of it, and did at last renounce 
it." (p. 159.) On the whole, however, this 
epoch (the first half of the eighteenth century) 
secularized and materialized the English peo- 

1 The phrase is borrowed from Lecky. See "History of Eng- 
land in the Eighteenth Century," II, p. 13. 



60 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

pie as nothing had done before, not even the 
period of the frivolous Kingof the Restoration 
Charles II; never had "sordid motives" occu- 
pied such high place. (Seeley is referring to 
the period up to 1883.) 

Indeed, the conclusion is inescapable that 
the effect which the slave trade — which was 
ever united with slave hunting and slave steal- 
ing — had upon the moral qualities of that part 
of the well-to-do citizens of the English nation 
enriched thereby could not have been exactly 
favorable; and if in this land, in greater de- 
gree and earlier than in other countries, com- 
plaints of humanitarians and philosophers 
against the brutalities of the possessing classes 
grew loud, one must, in order to understand 
the basis for such complaints, recall the man- 
ner in which these classes obtained a great 
part of their wealth. 

In the year 1750 Parliament enacted a law 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 61 

against the kidnapping of negro children, but 
it exhibited itself as "quite ineffective." 
Twenty years later the elder Pitt (the Earl of 
Chatham) boasted that it was due to his con- 
quests in Africa during the Seven Years' War 
that almost the entire slave trade had come 
into British hands. And the great majority 
looked upon this trade as upon a "pillanof the 
Empire and derided its few opponents as luna- 
tics." * 

1 Rose: "Pitt and the National Revival," London, 1912, p. 
455. The harbor of Liverpool owes its rise chiefly to the 
slave trade, for of all businesses which had their seat there, 
this business was "by far the most lucrative." "It has been 
computed that in the decade 1783-1793 Liverpool's slave- 
ships made 878 round voyages (i. e., from Liverpool to the 
Guinea Coast, thence to the West Indies, and back to the 
Mersey), carried 303,737 slaves and sold them for .£15,186,850" 
(nearly $76,000,000). In view of this it can be realized what 
indignation was aroused by the idea of forbidding this trade. 
"Bristol, though it had only eighteen ships in the trade, was 
also up in arms, for it depended largely on the refining of 
sugar and the manufacture of rum. . . . Persons of a rhetorical 
turn depicted in lurid colors the decay of Britain's mercantile 
marine, the decline of her wealth and the miseries of a sugar 
famine." (Rose, p. 463.) 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CONQUEST OF INDIA 

As to the conquest of India let us hear first 
the philosopher, James Mill, author of the 
first great history of India, himself an official 
of the company that carried out the greatest 
part of this conquest. He says: "The two 
important discoveries for conquering India 
were, first, the weakness of the native armies 
against European discipline; secondly, the 
facility of imparting that discipline to the na- 
tives in the European service. . . . Both dis- 
coveries were made by the French." Seeley, 
who quotes this passage (p. 233), adds that it 
is utterly incorrect to talk of the English nation 
as having "conquered" the nations of India. 
They were subjugated by an army of which 

62 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 63 

only the fifth part consisted of Englishmen, 
The other four-fifths were composed of the 
natives. One can thus rather say that India 
conquered itself. In reality there never was 
a national state of India. In reality, too, what 
took place was not so much a conquest as an 
internal revolution, the result of battles de- 
signed to set a limit to anarchy. The talisman 
which enabled the East India Company to 
put an end to the empire of the Grand Mogul 
"was not some incommunicable physical or 
moral superiority, as we love to imagine, but 
a superior discipline and military system, 
which could be communicated to the natives 
of India." (p. 245.) 

Whether or not it can be called conquest, 
certain it is that naked might — "blood and 
iron" — was what first enabled the East India 
Company and then the British state to acquire 
dominion over the greater part of India 



64 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

proper. The leaders in the decisive conflicts 
were two men who distinguished themselves 
through strong willpower and no small intel- 
ligence — Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. 

Clive (1725-1774) is described in the last 
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Cam- 
bridge, 1910) as "the first of a century's bril- 
liant succession of those 'soldier-politicals/ as 
they are called in the East, to whom Great 
Britain owes the conquest and consolidation of 
its greatest dependency." 1 

After his definite return to England, the 
House of Commons adopted a resolution 
(with 155 votes against 95), declaring that 
Lord Clive "obtained and possessed himself 
of £230,000 during his first administration 
of Bengal"; following this, however, a reso- 
lution was passed unanimously, giving rec- 
ognition to his great services in connection 

1 Encyc. Brit., xi ed., Clive. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 65 

with that country. The case of Omichund 
was not referred to. 

Omichund was a treasonable Hindu who 
was grossly defrauded by Lord Clive by means 
of a forgery, and who, as a result, became mad. 
The author of Clive's biography in the En- 
cyclopedia calls this case the only one "of ques- 
tionable honesty." Obviously the matter of 
the £230,000 was not questionable. Lord 
Clive committed suicide before he reached his 
fiftieth year. That a troubled conscience im- 
pelled him to this is not probable, even though 
he knew "that a good part of his fellow-coun- 
trymen regarded him as a cruel and perfidious 
tyrant." He suffered from attacks of melan- 
choly, and had made two attempts at suicide 
while he was yet a young clerk in Madras. 
Later he became passionately addicted to the 
opium habit. 

Warren Hastings, who was a bookkeeper in 



66 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

Calcutta in his youth, became when 39 years 
old (1771) Governor of Bengal, and a few 
years later Governor General of East India. 
His conduct in these two offices gave rise to 
the greatest state process known in history. 
This process, which the House of Commons 
conducted against him before the House of 
Lords, lasted from February 13, 1788, to April 
2 3> I 795- The chief prosecutor was no less 
a person than Edmund Burke. The trial 
dragged, but it must be considered that there 
was an immense amount of material to be dealt 
with. It ended with acquittal of the grave 
crimes against the state with which Hastings 
was charged, but he was condemned to pay the 
costs, £80,000. The judgment of posterity — 
at least in his own country — has more and 
more swung around in his favor. Even 
Macaulay's renowned article, which throws a 
bright light upon the most important charac- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 67 

teristics of the man, is to-day considered par- 
tisan and inexact. Hastings is to-day looked 
upon as the hero who first worked out a sys- 
tem of civil government for India and who 
put an end to the worst corruption among its 
officials, and to the systematic and wholesale 
plundering of the natives. It is, nevertheless, 
admitted that he did irregular things, violated 
the letter of the law, broke contractual prom- 
ises, and robbed widows, and that he was any- 
thing but a conscientious politician. 

The scene of the cruelties which he felt 
himself justified in committing was in those 
days vastly more remote in space from the 
homeland than to-day. But India is now, 
in point of time, still remote. It is likely 
that among the Mohammedans of to-day the 
memory of that time persists in a somewhat 
different aspect than among the fellow- 
countrymen of Warren Hastings, despite the 



68 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

fact that the latter assure us that the natives 
"honor" his name. 1 

As long as six years before the Hastings trial 
began, on April 9, 1782, Henry Dundas, then 
the newly appointed Treasurer of the Ad- 
miralty, and later, as Lord Melville, First 
Lord of the Admiralty, unfolded in the House 
of Commons, in a speech of nearly three hours' 
length, "the causes and extent of the national 
calamities in the East. He expatiated on the 
misconduct of the Indian presidencies and of 
the Court of Directors (of the East India 
Company) ; of the former, because they 
plunged the nation into wars for the sake of 
conquest, condemned and violated the engage- 
ment of treaties, and plundered and oppressed 
the people of India; of the latter, because 
they blamed misconduct only when it was un- 

1 Cf. Enc. Brit., xi ed., s.v., and Dictionary National Bi- 
ography, art. Warren Hastings. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 69 

attended with profit, but exercised a very con- 
stant forbearance towards the greatest delin- 
quency, as often as it was productive of a tem- 
porary gain." The speech was followed up 
by a number of propositions which he moved 
in the shape of resolutions. The resolutions 
were solemnly voted. 1 

The poet Cowper complained at the same 
time of his country 

That she is rigid in denouncing death 

On petty robbers, and indulges life 

And liberty, and oft times honor too, 

To peculators of the public gold. 

That thieves at home must hang, but he that puts 

Into his overgorged and bloated purse 

The wealth of India's provinces, escapes. 

The loss of the Thirteen Colonies was com- 
pensated for by the winning of India. In the 
continuous changing of fortunes marking the 

1 James Mill: "A History of the British India" (Book V, 
Chap 9). 



yo WARLIKE ENGLAND 

conflict with France, the loss of the colonies 
signified a defeat, the gaining of India a vic- 
tory. The result more than evened up the 
situation. "In India, indeed, they had the 
start of us much more decidedly than in 
North America; in India we had at the outset 
a sense of inferiority in comparison with them, 
and fought in a spirit of hopeless self-de- 
fence." (Seeley, p. 35.) Fear of the French 
was the deciding motive. "Behind every 
movement of the native powers we saw French 
intrigue, French gold, French ambition, and 
never, until we were masters of the whole 
country, got rid of that feeling that the French 
were driving us out of it." (p. 36.) Here, 
then, lay also the reason for "the competition 
of the Western states for the wealth of the 
regions discovered in the fifteenth century." 
(P- 3°5-) Hence the forcing of France out 
of America as well as out of India was the 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 71 

condition precedent to dominion over the Hin- 
dus and Mohammedans in India. "This fact, 
combined with the other fact, equally striking, 
of the great trade which now exists between 
England and India, leads very naturally to a 
theory that our Indian Empire has grown up 
from first to last out of the spirit of trade. We 
may imagine that after having established our 
settlements on the coast and defended these 
settlements both from the native powers and 
from the envy of the French, we then con- 
ceived the ambition of extending our com- 
merce further inland; that perhaps we met 
with new States, such as Mysore or the Mah- 
ratta Confederacy, which at first were unwill- 
ing to trade with us, but that in our eager 
avarice we had recourse to force, let loose our 
armies upon them, broke down their custom- 
houses and flooded their territories in turn 
with our commodities; that in this way we 



72 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

gradually advanced our Indian trade, which 
at first was insignificant, until it became con- 
siderable, and at last, when we had not only 
intimidated but actually overthrown every 
great native government, . . . then, all re- 
straint having been removed, our trade became 
enormous." (pp. 305-306.) Seeley is not dis- 
posed to accept this view out of hand. The 
relation of the various events to each other is, 
he thinks, more complex. The advance of 
business was independent of the advance of 
conquest. Commerce had been insignificant 
up to 1 8 13, despite the vast annexations that 
had gone before; it had not developed after 
the monopoly of the East India Company had 
been taken away by law and the company as 
good as dissolved. The periods of the advance 
of commerce and those of the advance of con- 
quest do not, in Seeley's opinion, correspond 
with each other. The world empire began 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 73 

with the protection and defense of the factors. 
"In the period which immediately followed, 
the revolutionary and corrupt period of Brit- 
ish India, it is undeniable that we were hurried 
on by mere rapacity. The violent proceed- 
ings of Warren Hastings at Benares, in Oudh 
and Rohilcund, were of the nature of money- 
speculations." (p. 313.) 

Seeley thinks that the later history of British 
India was of different nature. The clear per- 
ception of the historian fails him here. His 
statements can only show that the connection 
between trade and conquest was less apparent 
in more recent times. An end was put to the 
monstrous abuses of administration — abuses 
through which the East India Company 
erected for itself a monument of enduring 
shame — by a law of Pitt of 1784 and by the 
reforms of Lord Cornwallis, who was the 
Governor General from 1786 to 1793. From 



74 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

this time on there was no longer any connec- 
tion between the governors and the chiefs of 
the mercantile brigands. When, however, 
Lord Wellesley as Governor General in 1798 
elevated intervention and annexation to a prin- 
ciple, and his successors really first began to 
deal according to this principle, it is safe to 
say that they not only feathered their own 
nests; undoubtedly they well knew that they 
were opening up a source of incomputable 
wealth through commerce. The acts of Lord 
Dalhousie, who ruled India from 1847 to 1856 
and who took possession in 1856 of the King- 
dom of Oudh, without a shadow of right, as he 
had previously (1851-52) forcibly taken Pegu 
away from the Birmans, may possibly not 
have been the direct outcome of greed — See- 
ley is of the opinion that if these were crimes, 
they were crimes of ambition (p. 315) and it 
was, in any event, only the commercial inter- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 75 

ests of the homeland and its Government that 
indulged and supported him. In the earlier 
period the commercial motive was partially 
concealed in the greater love for and con- 
venience of direct robbery, in the later period 
through the ostensibly purely military policy 
of the Government But without the motive 
of greed the conquest of India by Great Brit- 
ain is not to be understood. For it has not only 
cost much blood — even if it was chiefly the 
blood of native mercenaries — but also much 
money. The stake here was also a national 
investment of grandiose proportions. It was 
reckoned to Warren Hastings as a great merit 
that he increased from three to five million 
pounds the receipts of the State, of which the 
East India Company was the immediate bene- 
ficiary. 

Even before Warren Hastings's deeds and 
misdeeds were known in detail, Richard Price, 



76 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

already referred to, wrote (p. 103) : "Turn 
your eyes to India. There more has been done 
than is now attempted in America. There 
ENGLISHMEN, actuated by the love of 
plunder and the spirit of conquest, have de- 
populated whole kingdoms, and ruined mil- 
lions of innocent people by the most infamous 
oppression and rapacity. The justice of the 
nation has slept over these enormities. Will 
the justice of Heaven sleep? Are we not now 
execrated on both sides of the globe?" 



Second Division: War Against the 
French Republic and Against Napoleon 



CHAPTER VII 

ATTACK UPON THE FRENCH REPUBLIC. THE 
EUROPEAN BALANCE OF POWER 

In his enumeration of the seven great wars 
which England undertook from 1688 to 1815, 
Seeley names the last two, "Wars against revo- 
lutionary France." In reality these were a 
single great war, even though interrupted by 
the Peace of Amiens ( 1802) , whose conditions 
England did not observe. This great war is 
pictured by Seeley as the continuation and 
close of the conflict for the New World and 
India. "As in the American War (the Ameri- 
can Revolution), France avenges on England 

77 



78 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

her expulsion from the New World (through 
the Paris Treaty of 1763) , so under Napoleon 
she makes titanic efforts to recover her lost 
place there." (p. 39.) A continental question 
furnished the first cause of the war. The 
French National Convention had decided, on 
November 16, 1792, that the mouth of the 
Scheldt should be free to all shipping. The 
convention thereupon gave notice to England 
that it would not be bound by the treaties — • 
there were no less than five of these since the 
Peace of Utrecht — which England had com- 
pelled the old monarchy to enter into. In 
these treaties France had acknowledged the 
right granted to the Dutch in the Treaty of 
Westphalia to exclude foreigners from the 
mouth of the Scheldt. England had, in addi- 
tion, through the treaty of alliance of 1788, 
guaranteed this and other rights of the Nether- 
lands. "It had long been a maxim at White- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 79 

hall (the street of the English Government 
buildings in London) that the Pays Bas must 
never go to France. To prevent such a disas- 
ter England had poured forth blood and treas- 
ure for more than a century." r 

The execution of Louis XVI ostensibly fur- 
nished the impulse. An ostensible moral mo- 
tive was at hand, that of putting an end to the 
doings of the Jacobins. The most modern 
English historian of this epoch does not be- 
lieve in the least in this motive. "The execu- 
tion was in no sense the cause of the war. The 
question turned essentially on the conduct of 
France towards our Dutch allies." (Rose, 
"Pitt and the Great War," p. 1 17) . "For Pitt 
and Grenville the war was not a war of opin- 
ion — Monarchy versus Republic. It was a 
struggle to preserve the Balance of Power 
which in all ages our statesmen have seen to be 

'Holland Rose: "Pitt and the Great War," p. 83. 



80 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

incompatible with the sovereignty of France 
in the Low Countries." (ibid., p. ioo.) The 
European balance of power is another formula 
tor the unconditional subjugation, brought 
about by any method preferred, of every Eu- 
ropean power which threatens to become or 
appears to be dangerous to the English World 
Power, and for the alliance with every Eu- 
ropean power which, in like manner, be the 
causes what they may, also finds itself in oppo- 
sition to the rival great power. Hence the 
maintaining of the European balance of power 
by England is constantly equivalent, in prac- 
tice, to a disturbance of the European balance 
of power, and means, therefore, European 
war. For, if the other powers are so grouped 
that they maintain among themselves the bal- 
ance of power or would again find themselves 
in such a status after a short war, England in- 
variably casts its weight into the scales against 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 81 

its opponent, and by doing so it incites and 
stirs up wars or lengthens them, in order to 
humble, weaken and rob its opponents. In 
this manner English world policy acquired the 
nimbus of having freed Europe from the ty- 
rant Bonaparte. One may picture for himself 
what the fate of France and of Europe would 
have been if England had not considered it 
necessary to put down the French Republic. 
Perhaps Napoleon's military genius would 
have never had an opportunity to develop it- 
self against Austria and Prussia. But these 
are idle musings. The subjugation of France 
(and of Spain, since 1713 a dependency of 
France) was the consistent and important mo- 
tive of the English world policy. Here, if 
anywhere, we see the tremendous drama of a 
clash of world powers whose courses had been 
so laid out that they simply must meet and 
come into collision with one another; for a 



82 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

tendency to world-domination lay in their be- 
ginnings in the French Revolution, just as it 
had lain in the old French Monarchy, and it 
was by helping this tendency to prevail that 
"the Little Corporal" made himself the execu- 
tor of the Revolution. 

It is highly fascinating to follow the twists 
and turns of the English policy in this contest, 
a contest which was finally victorious with the 
help of the German powers. One of the prin- 
cipal war methods of England has always been 
the capture of its enemy's merchantmen at sea 
and the searching of neutral vessels. It was 
against this that the union of "armed neutral- 
ity" was established by Catherine II in 1779, 
and renewed in 1800. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PIRATICAL EXPEDITION AGAINST DENMARK 

The arbitrary interpretation of international 
law through which England had earlier 
stirred up the neutral sea powers against itself 
was soon thrown into the shade by an action 
which filled all Europe with discontent and 
horror. This was the sudden attack upon the 
absolutely neutral and peaceable Danish em- 
pire — the bombardment and burning of Co- 
penhagen. 

The Peace of Tilsit was concluded on July 
7, 1 807. On July 2 1 st Canning received a con- 
fidential report concerning Napoleon's inten- 
tions in regard to Denmark, and concerning 
the secret articles of the Tilsit Treaty. Neither 

83 



84 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

letters nor persons could at that time reach 
London from Tilsit in fourteen days. (As a 
matter of fact, the report dealt with an alleged 
conversation between Napoleon and the Tsar 
of June 25th) .* On July 26th Admiral Gam- 
bier received orders to sail into the Baltic. 
"On August 3d the English Minister Taylor 
declared to Count BernstorfT at Copenhagen 
in a ministerial conference that the English 
Government had received the most definite 
and indubitable information that Russia, 
through secret articles of the Tilsit Treaty, 
had made itself party to an agreement with 
France directed against England, and that 
Denmark had already joined in this agree- 
ment. And in the middle of August, Canning, 
the State Secretary, declared officially that the 
English Government now possessed authentic 
information that the Duchies of Schleswig and 

1 Eng. Hist. Rev., Oct., 1901, p. 717. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 85 

Holstein were actually occupied by French 
troops." * 

These Duchies have never been occupied b^ 
French troops. It is true that a secret treaty 
which followed that of Tilsit did, under cer- 
tain conditions, contemplate putting pressure 
upon Denmark. When, however, Canning, 
speaking in the House of Commons, desired 
to justify the attack by the alleged knowledge 
of these articles, and was taken to task, he had 
to admit that "the ministers have not said 
that they had in their possession any one secret 

1 This is the report of one versed in the matter, set forth 
in an anonymous German publication which appeared the same 
year (1807), bearing the title: "Has England succeeded in 
justifying its piratical expedition against Denmark? An in- 
quiry inspired by the English declaration of September 25, 
1807." (Kiel, Akademische Buchhandlung, 1807, 157 pages.) 
The author was Councilor of Legation Joh. Daniel Timotheus 
Manthey. The correctness of his point of view (except for the 
fact that he took Napoleon too lightly) is established by the 
modern thorough investigations of Erik Moller in the Dansk 
Historisk Tidskrift, 1910-12, pp. 309-422. Moller establishes 
also that the real contents of the secret treaty were entirely 
different from those suspected and asserted in London. 



86 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

article, but that the substance of such secret 
article had been confidentially communicated 
to His Majesty's Government, and that such 
communication had been made a long time 
previous to the date alluded to by the honor- 
able gentleman." l (Attention had been direct- 
ed to the fact that it was not until August 8th 
that the news of the conclusion of peace and 
the text of the treaty had reached England's 
shores. ) Canning nowhere mentions this date. 
In the "Declaration" given at Westminster on 
September 25, 1807, the English Government 
also maintains that it had "received the most 
positive information of the determination of 
the present ruler of France to occupy, with 
a military force, the territory of Holstein — 
for the purpose of excluding Great Britain 
from all her accustomed channels of com- 
munication; of inducing or compelling the 

1 Jan. 22, Commons, p. 70. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 87 

court of Denmark to close the passage of the 
Sound against the British commerce and navi- 
gation; and of availing himself of the aid of 
the Danish marine for the invasion of Great 
Britain and of Ireland." These (supposed) 
plans were to be anticipated. 

A modern English historian, 1 who eulogizes 
Canning's genius and ascribes intuitive intel- 
lectual powers to him, is at the same time com- 
pelled to admit: "It may now be regarded as 
almost proven that the information on which 
he at first based was extremely meagre. In 
part . . . it was absolutely false; but Canning 
did not know of its falsity until August 10th." 
(The bombardment began on September 2d!) 

The action began with the instructing of the 
British Minister at Copenhagen "to reassure 
the Danish Minister as to the presence of the 

Anon., in the Edinburgh Review, April, 1906, pp. 345-361. 
I assume that the writer is a historian from the fact that 
he has drawn his material from the archives. 



88 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

British fleet in the Baltic, that it was not in- 
tended as a menace to Denmark, but merely 
needful to cooperate with the King of Sweden 
and protect British reinforcements" (which 
had been brought to Stralsund). These in- 
structions bore date of July 16th. On July 
28th a special Minister (Jackson) was ap- 
pointed to the Danish Crown Prince (and the 
Regent), and on July 29th he received "spe- 
cial and very confidential" instructions (in 
Canning's own handwriting) in which ap- 
peared the following: "You will carefully 
bear in mind that the possession of the Danish 
fleet is the one main and indispensable object 
to which the whole of your negotiations is to 
be directed, and without which no other stipu- 
lation or concession can be considered as of 
any value or importance. In the event, there- 
fore, of the Danish Government even consent- 
ing to enter into a treaty of alliance as pro- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 89 

posed in the project with which you are fur- 
nished, it will be necessary that a secret arti- 
cle should be added to this treaty, by which 
the delivery of the Danish fleet must be 
stipended to take place forthwith, and without 
waiting for the formality of the ratification of 
the treaty. (Signed) G. Canning." * Jackson 
first brought his ultimatum to Minister Bern- 
storff, then (on August 9th) he was received 
at Kiel by the Danish Crown Prince. The 
negotiations were resultless. On August 16th 
the British soldiers landed at Vibeck (be- 
tween Helsingor and Copenhagen) . Attempts 
were still made by the admirals to compel a 
peaceful delivery. The bombardment of Co- 
penhagen began on September 2d, and from 
September 5th on it had terrible effect. The 
beautiful cathedral (Fruekirke), several 
buildings belonging to the university and 305 

^ose, in Eng. Hist. Review, Jan., 1896, p. 86. 



9 o WARLIKE ENGLAND 

houses were burned. Capitulation and the 
forcible taking away of the whole Danish fleet 
followed. 

An idea of the depth of the moral indigna- 
tion which this action aroused in Denmark 
and the duchies can be gained from the long 
list of published protests that appeared, at- 
tacking the "tiger-policy against neutral Den- 
mark" and calling down the vengeance of 
Heaven upon the despoiler. The most meri- 
torious of these publications is that of Minis- 
terial Councilor Manthey, already referred 
to, of which the most modern Danish com- 
mentator of these events (Moller, referred to 
above) says that it "vindicates with great 
power the traditional Danish view of those 
occurrences," and this view is confirmed to the 
fullest extent by the most recent investigations 
of the archives. 

Manthey says, among other things (p. 104) : 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 91 



"To-day, when the veil is rent which hitherto 
concealed from princes and peoples England's 
selfishness and ambition, let us consider 
whether so many a crown would have been 
brought low and so many a flourishing land 
devastated if England's policy, England's gold 
and England's secret crimes had not been the 
great ferment by which, in our remarkable 
generation, the excited masses were brought 
to revolt, and by which dissolutions, separa- 
tions and new alliances were brought about 
and everything tended toward an altered state 
of affairs whose eventual realization was to 
cost mankind much blood and many tears." 
The booklet characterizes (p. 8) the West- 
minster "Declaration" (supra) as "in its en- 
tirety weak, in places malicious, but always a 
web of hypocrisy, knavery and ignorance." 

In England, too, the general horror found a 
strong echo. In the Political Review for Sep- 



92 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

tember, 1807, the affair is termed "a scene of 
complicated iniquity," and, after pouring out 
its whole indignation over the principle — 
Might makes Right — with which the proceed- 
ing was sought to be defended, the Review 
says: "If anything could add to that disgust, 
that horror we feel whenever we contemplate 
the subject, it is the language of humanity and 
piety affected by our commanders-in-chief em- 
ployed in this expedition." * The debates 
upon the address from the throne in the session 
of Parliament beginning in January, 1808, 
occupied themselves chiefly with this matter. 
While the address itself praised this glorious 
deed, six Lords submitted a protest, "because 
no proof of hostile intention on the part of 
Denmark has been adduced, nor any case of 
necessity made out to justify the attack upon 



1 "Reflections on the War with Denmark," etc., extracted 
from Flower's Political Review. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 93 

Copenhagen, without which the measure is, in 
our conception, discreditable to the character 
and injurious to the interests of this country." 
Lord Erskine's individual protest takes more 
than four pages of the Register. It says "that 
no speculation of the probable fall of the 
Danish fleet into the possession, or power, of 
France would justify its hostile seizure by 
Great Britain; that such a seizure would be 
subversive of the first elements of public law, 
and that until this attack upon Copenhagen 
shall receive vindication by proof of its jus- 
tice, Great Britain has lost her moral situation 
in the world." 1 

In the Lower House also the opposition 
made itself heard. William Windham, him- 
self until shortly before that time a member of 
the Ministry, declared "that the only way left 
of effacing the stains thus brought upon the 

1 The Parliamentary Register, 1808, vol. i, 2. i. 



94 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

country was the public avowal of their atroc- 
ity; and he accused ministers of having sacri- 
ficed the national reputation. The ruins of 
Copenhagen were the monument of their dis- 
grace." 1 On another occasion the same re- 
nowned orator expressed the opinion that the 
Government had openly disavowed the princi- 
ple that honesty is the best policy, and that 
when people began to make their theories fit 
their evil practices, it was a condition of most 
hopeless depravity; this new system of moral- 
ity would prove a lasting injury to the world. 
Several other members of Parliament termed 
attempts at justification "contradictory and 
inconsistent chatter." One did not know, they 
said, which of the stories dished up by the 
Government one was to believe. "It was, to 
use a coarse expression, to be sure, but one that 
was extremely applicable, it was something 

1 Pari. Reg., Feb. 4, 1808. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 95 

like swindling the house out of its opinion." * 
One member called the taking away of the 
Danish fleet plain "theft." "Dishonest as the 
expedition to Copenhagen" became a proverb 
in London. 

As long afterward as 1822 the poet Thomas 
Campbell spoke, in verses dedicated to a Dan- 
ish friend, of the "scandalous matter." 

That attack, I allow, was a scandalous matter; 

It was a deed of our merciless Tories, 
Whom we hate, though they rule us, and I can assure 
you 
They had swung for it if England had sat as their 
jury. 

Modern English historians consider the 
matter coolly. H. W. Wilson (Trinity Col- 
lege, Oxford) says: "That the attack was 
necessary no one will now deny. England 
was fighting for her existence; and however 
disagreeable was the task of striking a weak 

1 (Windham) Pari. Reg., p. 289. 



96 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

neutral, she risked her own safety if she left in 
Napoleon's hand a fleet of such proportions." 1 
Somewhat different is the judgment of J. Hol- 
land Rose (Cambridge) in the same volume of 
the "Cambridge Modern History." He 
writes: "Great Britain suffered a loss of moral 
reputation, which partly outweighed the gain 
brought by the accession of material strength 
to her navy and the added sense of security. 
The peoples of the Continent, unaware of the 
reasons that prompted the action of Great 
Britain, regarded it as little better than pirat- 
ical. Only by degrees did this bad impression 
fade away. . . ." 2 

There is an outward resemblance between 
this action and the course of the German Em- 
pire towards Belgium in 1914. In both cases 
it was a matter of anticipating the enemy; in 

1 Cambridge Modern History, vol. ix, p. 236. 

2 Cambridge Modern History, vol. ix, p. 299. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 97 

both cases there existed the opinion that the 
enemy would not observe neutrality. But 
there were these tremendous differences: (1) 
In 1807 this opinion was an assumption based 
solely upon rumors; in 1914 it was based on 
facts; (2) In 1807 Denmark itself had scru- 
pulously observed neutrality, and the Regent 
of the country was even personally inclined to- 
wards England; in 1914 Belgium had grossly 
violated its neutrality by a military convention 
into which it had entered with England; (3) 
Denmark when assailed had no allies, and even 
if Napoleon had desired to assist, he was ut- 
terly unable to do so. Furthermore, the 
greater part of the Danish land forces was in 
Holstein, and the Government was so unsus- 
picious that it did not even bring these to 
Seeland. Belgium, on the contrary, had, 
when it was attacked, the secretly allied great 
powers, England and France, behind it, and 



98 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

both were in a position to render aid; (4) 
England offered Denmark the choice between, 
war and alliance; as a pledge for this alliance 
it demanded the delivering up of the Danish 
fleet, which was the sole object for which it 
was working. The German Empire offered a 
choice between war and a neutrality which 
should simply permit the passage of troops, 
for which full indemnity was solemnly 
pledged. Many authorities on international 
law have maintained the existence of a right 
of passage through neutral lands, especially 
in the case where one belligerent cannot get 
at the other without going through neutral 
territory. This situation plainly existed here 
as a result of the French fortifications on the 
Meuse. 



PART II 

THE ENGLISH WORLD POLICY IN 

THE NINETEENTH AND 

TWENTIETH CENTURIES 

Third Division : Quarrels in Three Parts 
of the Earth 

The array of great wars — in Seeley's opin- 
ion — not only begins with this period (1688- 
1815), but appears also to end there. He 
says: "Since 1815 we have had local wars in 
India and some of our colonies" — and in 
China! and in Persia! — "but of struggles 
against great European Powers, such as this 
period saw seven times, we have only seen one 
(the Crimean War) in a period more than 
half as long (1816-1882), and it lasted but 

two years." (p. 25.) There is no presentiment 

99 



ioo WARLIKE ENGLAND 

here of what the twentieth century has re- 
vealed to us. The able scholar forgets here 
also that the wars against France in the eight- 
eenth century were carried on in good part 
on colonial soil (in North America), and 
that, in analogy therewith, most of the conflicts 
that arose in Asia during the nineteenth cen- 
tury composed a latent war against Russia; 
to say nothing of wars of the Turks and Japa- 
nese, back of which stood the British world 
power. For in this whole period the British 
foreign policy never rested nor altered its na- 
ture. Its field and object, however, no longer 
lay chiefly in the New World, but in the Old, 
no longer in America, but in Asia, and Africa 
is the bridge to Asia. This is the tendency for 
which the path was prepared in the last half 
of the eighteenth century. To widen, retain 
and make certain the possession of India ap- 
pears as the most important among the great 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 101 

tasks that were imposed when France was 
forced to withdraw from the rivalry for the 
mastery of the seas. There the fear of France 
had formerly — for more than a hundred years 
— been a constant goad, there comes now the 
fear of Russia. A further factor is naturally 
commercial interests, which demand an exten- 
sion of spheres of interest and dominion. Fis- 
cal interests go hand in hand with this factor. 
And thus the agitations and warlike disturb- 
ances through which the territory of ancient 
civilizations is opened to the wares of indus- 
try, persist throughout nearly the entire nine- 
teenth century. Parallel with the gradual 
elimination of the domination of the East 
India Company — which, since 1784, had al- 
ready been strongly restricted, being first de- 
prived of its monopoly (1815, except as to 
China, which lasted until 1833), then of its 
commercial functions, and finally of its exist- 



102 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

ence (1858) — goes not only thorough and suc- 
cessful reform of administration, but also sys- 
tematic conquest. It finds its climax in the 
erection of the so-called Indian Empire 

(1876). 

And the modern paths of English foreign 
policy, like the old ones, have been cut through 
crag and thicket with iron mattocks and axes, 
and rivers of blood have been shed in the 
work. 



CHAPTER IX 

AFGHANISTAN 

The first important conflict into which 
Great Britain was brought in following out 
these aims with accustomed energy and un- 
scrupulousness was the war with Afghanistan. 

Feuds among this empire, the Indian Sikhs 
and the neighboring Persia were at the bottom 
of the trouble. English and Russian influ- 
ences were everywhere opposed to one another. 
Both, for instance, carried on a long rivalry 
for the favors of the ruler of the eastern terri- 
tory, Dost Mohammed, who lived in Kabul. 
The Russians had the advantage. Together 
with Persia they attacked Herat, the capital 
of the western district. Lord Auckland, who 

had been appointed in 1836 Governor General 

103 



104 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

of India, considered the time ripe for par- 
ticipation. He allied himself with the Sikhs 
and deposed Dost Mohammed. On his throne 
he set an unpopular pretender, who, despite 
better title to the crown, lived in exile (August 
7, 1839). The English Government approved 
and supported this coup d'etat. For a time all 
seemed to be going well, and there was rejoic- 
ing in London over the splendid issue. In 
November, 1841, the Afghans revolted against 
the prince imposed upon them. The result 
was a complete and shameful defeat of the 
English frontier troops. They were com- 
pelled hastily to evacuate the territory, and to 
surrender all their cannons except six, which 
they were permitted to retain for the march 
back. Dost Mohammed, who had been carried 
captive to India, returned home. His son, 
Akhbar Khan, had been the leader of the re- 
volt. The retreat of the English through the 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 105 

Koord Kabul Pass reminds one of the great 
retreat of 181 2, but its results were much 
worse. As in 181 2, the winter was severe. 
The situation was made worse by the fact that 
many women and children were with the retir- 
ing army. Akhbar Khan, who followed the 
retreat, eventually took the women and chil- 
dren under his protection. General Elphin- 
stone, the commander-in-chief, also had to sur- 
render to him. The army itself was continu- 
ously attacked by the fanatical mountain 
tribes. After thousands had fallen, the rem- 
nant found itself trapped in the Jugdulluk 
Pass. An indiscriminate massacre followed. 
Of the entire army, which had numbered more 
than 16,000 men at the beginning of the ex- 
pedition, a single man survived, who had taken 
refuge under the walls of Diellabad, in which 
city an English garrison was maintained. The 
fortress was besieged by Akhbar Khan, but in 



106 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

vain. English auxiliary troops under Gen- 
eral Pollock appeared and the siege was 
raised. The English pressed on to Kabul and 
liberated the women and children, but they 
held it advisable, despite this success, to evac- 
uate the land and reinstate Dost Mohammed. 

Auckland's successor, Lord Ellenborough, 
issued on October i, 1842, a proclamation, in 
which he declared that the Government of 
India would remain "content with the limits 
nature appears to have assigned to its empire," 
and that "to force a sovereign upon a reluctant 
people would be inconsistent with the policy as 
it is with the principles of the British Govern- 
ment." The noble lord appears to have looked 
upon the preceding conquests in India as 
"natural," and upon the English domination 
there as an object of the eager aspiration of 
the Indians. 

A glance into the literature of that time 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 107 

gives one an idea of the stupefaction and em- 
bitterment evoked in the "Motherland" by the 
frightful catastrophe. An author who criti- 
cized the British foreign policy of that time 
with unusual acumen and brilliancy was the 
Scotchman, David Urquhart. In his polemic 
against the Edinburgh Review, which, as or- 
gan of the Whig party, then in the saddle, had 
the boldness to defend the war, he seeks to 
make the madness of the defeat clear by an 
imaginary dialogue between Lord Palmerston, 
both then and often thereafter the spirit of 
the British world policy, and a privy council- 
or. The dialogue follows: 

Lord Palmerston — We must march to Ka- 
bul, dethrone his ruler and set up another. 

Privy Councilor — Are we attacked by the 
Afghans? Are treaties violated, etc.? 

Lord P. — No, none of these things. But 



108 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

Dost Mohammed is friendly to Persia, and 
Persia is friendly to Russia ; and therefore we 
must destroy him. 

Councilor — Bur/ what do you propose to 
do with Persia? 

Lord P. — Oh, Persia is beaten back, the 
siege of Herat is raised, and we have nothing 
to fear from her. 

Councilor — What do you propose to do 
with Russia? 

Lord P. — Oh, Russia has sent to us the most 
satisfactory assurances and we have nothing to 
fear from her; quite the contrary; indeed, she 
can do nothing, for her missions and expedi- 
tions have utterly failed. 

Councilor — The danger is over, you are 
satisfied with the power whence it sprang, and 
after that you go to send armies into the terri- 
tories of friendly people! 

The Privy Councilor and the Monarch, 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 109 

says Urquhart, must at once have said : "This 
is a case for Bedlam." 

In another passage he contrasts the conduct 
of England with that of Mongolians, of whom 
an Arab historian wrote that they systematic- 
ally ravage and murder, but "without hatred 
and vengeance." He continues: 

"Into Central Asia we march an army 
among a people so friendly as to be ready 
even to accept our government — we set up a 
pretender — we support the perpetration of 
every internal folly and crime — we do every- 
thing that can arouse a people already subject 
to us through good will and respect into hatred 
alike and contempt. Our army is destroyed. 
We make up our minds that we shall have 
nothing to do with the country, and yet we 
send an army there again to ravish and destroy 
without even the thought of retaining posses- 
sion ; so that the contrast between the Mongols 



no WARLIKE ENGLAND 

and the British is this — that the first destroyed 
and ravished by calculation, and without 
either hatred or vengeance, and that our 
troops, composed of so-called citizens and 
Christians, and sent forth from a country 
honoring itself with the name of Britain, es- 
teeming itself enlightened, philanthropic and 
religious, appear there without any calcula- 
tion, to devastate and destroy, moved only by 
hatred and vengeance. As to the pretext that 
we marched to regain the prisoners, however 
it might have served for the cry of the mo- 
ment, it is too hollow and absurd to refer to 
now. The prisoners could have been endan- 
gered only by the step which we took; and for 
them to be returned to us it required that we 
should cease to reperpetrate crime, and to 
hold as a slave the Prince whom we had so 
cruelly dethroned." 
These atrocities brought a tragic fate for an 



WARLIKE ENGLAND in 

admirable and talented young man, Captain 
Burnes, an authority on Afghanistan, who, en- 
trusted with an official mission, warned in vain 
against the Government's mistaken measures. 
Sir T. W. Kaye, who is to be thanked for the 
best history of this war, remarks that "it 
should never be forgotten ... by those who 
would form a correct estimate of the character 
and career of Alexander Burnes, that both 
have been misrepresented in those collections 
of state papers which are supposed to furnish 
the best materials of history, but which are 
often in reality only one-sided compilations 
of garbled documents — counterfeits, which the 
ministerial stamp forces into currency, de- 
frauding a present generation, and handing 
down to posterity a chain of dangerous lies." 
Justin McCarthy, who cites this passage, says 
that not until years after Burnes met his fear- 
ful end (he was murdered in the riots of 



U2 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

November 21, 1841) did it become known that 
the reports which he had sent in had been laid 
before the House of Commons by the English 
Government in such a mutilated and per- 
verted 4 form that it was made to appear as if 
he had approved and recommended the policy 
against which he had felt himself impelled to 
issue a warning. 

McCarthy terms the history of these years 
(1839-42) "a tale of such misfortune, blunder 
and humiliation as the annals of England do 
not anywhere else present. Blunders which 
were, indeed, worse than crimes, and a princi- 
ple of action which it is a crime in any ruler 
to sanction, brought things to such a pass that 
in a few years from the accession of the Queen 
we had in Afghanistan soldiers who were posi- 
tively afraid to fight the enemy, and some Eng- 
lish officials who were not ashamed to treat 
for the removal of our most formidable foes 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 113 



by purchased assassination. . . . This chapter 
will teach us how vain is a policy founded on 
evil and ignoble principles. . . . We had 
gone completely out of our way for the pur- 
pose of meeting mere speculative dangers." 1 
Grown wiser through misfortune, England 
did, indeed, refrain for four decades from in- 
terfering with the affairs of Afghanistan. In 
the meanwhile the Russian peril increased. 
There were renewed and bitter conflicts. 
There was again a revolt in Kabul. The en- 
tire personnel of the British Legation was 
slain (September 3, 1879). Entrance into the 
country had been refused the legation in the 
preceding year, but the Afghans, yielding to 
force, had withdrawn their opposition. After 
repeated battles England was compelled to 
abandon its demand to maintain a permanent 

Justin McCarthy: "A History of Our Own Times," vol. i, 
pp. 174-5, 205. Tauchnitz edition. 



ii 4 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

legation, and promised once more to evacuate 
the land. Since then the Foreign Office has 
wooed the favor of the Emir. In the Anglo- 
Russian Convention of August 31, 1907, Eng- 
land renounced any purpose of altering po- 
litical conditions in Afghanistan, of mixing in 
its administration or of annexing its territory, 
and pledged itself not to exert its influence in 
any manner menacing to Russia. Russia 
acknowledged Afghanistan as lying outside 
the sphere of its influence. 



CHAPTER X 

THE OPIUM WAR 

Upon the Afghans English policy tried to 
impose a hated ruler; upon the Chinese, at 
about the same period, a hated commodity. 

As is well known, China opposed for many 
years the entrance of all European traders and 
their wares. After the way had been finally 
opened, John Company — as the East India 
Company was called in England — reaped the 
chief successes. Its main article of commerce 
was opium, won from poppies cultivated in 
India. The growing of poppies was exclu- 
sively under Government control (en regie). 
After the company lost its monopoly, the trade 
assumed much greater proportions. It was 
nothing but smuggling, for all commerce with 

115 



n6 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

opium was strictly forbidden by Chinese laws. 
The fearful moral and physical effects of the 
indulgence in opium formed the express 
ground for this prohibition. 

But the Chinese authorities were unable to 
check the smuggling in the face of the English 
Government's systematic furtherance of it 
The smugglers became bolder and more un- 
scrupulous, the complaints of the Chinese au- 
thorities louder. The English Government 
declared that it had no intention of placing 
British subjects in a position to disregard the 
laws of the land with which they were carry- 
ing on trade. No one took this declaration 
seriously. Nevertheless, the Emperor Suan- 
Tsung believed himself in a position to ven- 
ture a decisive step. Through Governor Ling 
in Canton he issued a demand for the deliver- 
ing up of all contraband stores of opium. 
Twenty thousand cases of the valuable product 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 117 

were given to the flames. The English agent 
"charged with the oversight of the commerce 
with China" turned to the Governor General 
of India with a plea for support. He declared 
that the life and property of British subjects 
had been attacked and were in danger, and 
begged the Governor General to send as many 
warships as he could spare. The Opium War 
had begun. The hostilities on land and sea 
lasted from February, 1840, until August, 
1841. England and opium won a "glorious" 
victory. China was compelled to open five 
harbors, to cede Hongkong, and to pay $22,- 
500,000 (£4,500,000) as a war indemnity and 
an additional $6,250,000 (£1,250,000) for the 
opium burned. 

The conscience of the nation did not remain 
mute. A flood of articles, filled with expres- 
sions of shame and moral indignation, was 
poured out throughout the land. In the House 



u8 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

of Commons William Ewart Gladstone made 
one of his earliest important speeches. "I am 
not competent," he said, "to judge how long 
this war may last . . . but this I can say, that 
a war more unjust in its origin, a war more cal- 
culated in its progress to cover this country 
with disgrace, I do not know and I have not 
read of." » 

After the conclusion of hostilities the vener- 
able Duke of Wellington was charged with 
the duty of moving in the House of Lords a 
vote of thanks for the army and navy — "the 
victor in years of warfare against soldiers un- 
surpassed in history" — comments McCarthy 



1 J. Morley, the biographer of Gladstone, says on this point 
("The Life of William Ewart Gladstone," vol. i, p. 226) : "This 
transaction began to make Mr. Gladstone uneasy, as was in- 
deed to be expected in anybody who held that a state should 
have a conscience." This Morley is the same man who, as 
Viscount Morley, represented the present Government in the 
Upper House. He withdrew from the Cabinet on account of 
England's participation in the War of 1914, of which he 
disapproved. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 119 

(vol. i, p. 140) — "to the fleet and army which 
triumphed over the unarmed, helpless, child- 
like Chinese." 

The opium question was not settled by the 
war. The import of opium from India to 
China, which in 1810-11 amounted to hardly 
more than 4,000 cases (so-called piculs, each 
containing 133 pounds), had in 1835-36 
reached a yearly average of 35,500 cases. The 
imports continued to increase, in the face of 
every protest, and in 1855 more than 78,000 
cases were brought across the border. The 
English Government put pressure upon China 
to legalize a trade which it was powerless to 
suppress, and thus to make of it a regular 
source of fiscal income. This was finally done 
by a commercial treaty of 1858. 

"Concurrently there was in England a re- 
vival of the movement against the policy of 
forcing opium on China. Even in the time of 



i2o WARLIKE ENGLAND 

the East India Company's monopoly, prior to 
1833, some voices had been raised in favor of 
actively assisting the Chinese Government in 
enforcing its prohibition of the foreign im- 
port; and quite apart from the parliamentary 
opposition to the Government of the day, a 
formidable body of public opinion had gath- 
ered force and enlisted the support of the 
leaders of religious and philanthropic work 
on the side of the movement. This feeling was 
encouraged and its utterance strengthened by 
the almost unanimous expression of opinion 
by the Protestant missionaries, both English 
and American, working in the China field, 
that opium smoking was a great moral evil 
which seriously impeded their efforts to bring 
the Chinese to recognize the truths of Chris- 
tianity, and that it was incumbent on all Chris- 
tian nations to dissociate themselves from a 
trade which brought disrepute upon the for- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 121 

eign, i. e., the Christian name. The move- 
ment culminated in a memorial (Papers re- 
lating to opium, p. 77), presented in August, 
1855, by Lord Shaftesbury as chairman of a 
committee formed to sever all connection of 
the English people and its Government with 
the opium trade. . . } 

"Public opinion in America was pro- 
nounced against the opium trade. Of the Prot- 
estant missionaries in China during the years 
1834 t0 i860, it may be said generally that 
the Americans outnumbered the English in the 
proportion of two to one; and their reports 
to the home societies produced a marked ef- 
fect on the deeply religious sense of the Ameri- 
can people." 2 

The repugnance against the business was 
stronger in America than in England. The 

1 Morse: "The International Relations of the Chinese Em- 
pire" (London, 1910), p. 550. 

2 Id., p. 551. 



122 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

representative of the United States, moreover, 
was the only one who, in the negotiations of 
the years 1832-44, expressly supported the 
Chinese prohibition of the trade in opium, and 
many American merchants in China are said 
to have abstained from the trade before that 
period on moral grounds. It was the Ameri- 
can Government, in the Philippines, too, 
which brought about the opium conference 
which met at Shanghai on February 1, 1909, 
and which declared that it was the duty of the 
Government to prevent the export of opium 
to every country which had forbidden its im- 
port. 

The trade flourished without interruption 
(in 1880 the importations amounted to some 
97,000 piculs, about 6,600 tons) until only re- 
cently, when, under the influence of the revolu- 
tionary movement in China, renewed efforts 
were made to suppress it. Even the cultiva- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 123 

tion of the opium poppy, which had steadily 
increased in China itself, has been forbidden. 

The opium trade continued to be a severe 
burden upon the English conscience — whether 
from religious or ethical-philosophical 
grounds. Finally, in 1907, the British Gov- 
ernment announced its willingness gradually 
to reduce the export of opium from India to 
China, so that it should cease entirely in ten 
years. It will be interesting to see whether this 
will really be done. 

During all this period China, as is well 
known, suffered from deep and serious dis- 
turbances. Along with the curious Taiping 
Rebellion, which lasted more than a decade 
(1 855-1 866), came gradually attacks from 
the side of England, which, as had earlier been 
the case in the Crimean War and in all ques- 
tions affecting the Near and Far East, had 
France in its train. 



i2 4 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

The case of the lorcha (river-boat) Arrow 
furnished the ground for this war. The Ar- 
row was a Chinese vessel which at the time 
was sailing under the British flag, quite with- 
out right. A Chinese watch had, on October 
8, 1855, arrested twelve men from this boat 
on a charge of piracy. The English consul 
in Canton demanded the surrender of the pris- 
oners upon the ground that the vessel was an 
English ship. (As a matter of fact, it had 
for a time sailed as an English vessel, but 
the registry period had expired). Upon the 
refusal by the Chinese of his demand, the con- 
sul appealed to the envoy plenipotentiary in 
Hongkong. The latter demanded not only 
the surrender of the arrested men, but also an 
apology and the promise of the Chinese offi- 
cials not to repeat such an offense. The Chi- 
nese replied with further representations, and 
Canton was immediately bombarded. The 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 125 

operations on land and water lasted twenty- 
two days. 

In England the people were not altogether 
pleased with this course. Its illegality was 
only too apparent. In the Upper House the 
venerable Lord Lyndhurst declared that 
neither law nor common-sense could justify 
it. It was, he declared, impossible to place 
a Chinese boat in Chinese waters outside the 
pale of Chinese law. "A lorcha owned by a 
Chinese purchased a British flag; did that 
make her a British vessel?" had been the 
query of the Chinese governor. "Indeed," 
said Lord Lyndhurst, "when we are talking 
of treaty transactions with Eastern nations, 
we have a kind of loose law and loose notion of 
morality in regard to them." A motion to 
disavow the proceeding was lost in the House 
of Lords, by a vote of no to 146. In the 
Lower House, however, Cobden procured the 



126 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

passage of a vote of censure by a small ma- 
jority. It was a blow to Lord Palmerston's 
cabinet and came in part from some of his 
former adherents. Audacious and confident 
as always, Lord Palmerston dissolved Parlia- 
ment. He gave out the parole: "An insolent 
barbarian violated the British flag, broke the 
engagements of treaties," etc. The parole 
worked. Palmerston won a brilliant victory 
at the polls. 

But had the case of the piratical vessel and 
the bombardment of Canton triumphed? 
McCarthy gave this judgment: "The truth 
is that there has seldom been so flagrant and 
inexcusable an example of high-handed law- 
lessness in the dealings of a strong with a weak 
nation!' And G. M. Trevelyan, writing as 
recently as 1913, says: "It is probable that 
every man, even the most hearty imperialist, 
who to-day studies the treatment of China by 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 127 

Palmerston in the affair of the Arrow, will 
arrive at the conclusion that he abused the 
strength of Britain and brought on a war 
originating from an unworthy quarrel." * 

It was a tedious war that was thus begun 
and that was gladly supported by Louis Na- 
poleon. Not until the autumn of i860 did 
it reach its end, after the summer palace at 
Peking had been looted for three days by 
English and French officers. That a deep 
hatred for Europeans has been nourished 
among the Chinese by such methods has made 
itself apparent in later occurrences of far- 
reaching consequences. 

1 Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," p. 258. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CRIMEAN WAR 

After Napoleon had been crushed and the 
conflict of more than a century against 
France's rivalry at land and sea had been 
closed, the eyes of the English policy were, 
until nearly the close of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, directed anxiously toward Russia. But 
only a single European war in which Eng- 
land was directly interested resulted there- 
from. The Crimean War was the work of 
Lord Palmerston, who had the ambition to 
accomplish for his native land what the elder 
Pitt had accomplished a hundred years earlier. 
What France had been to Pitt, Russia was 
to Palmerston. To Palmerston, as to Pitt, war 
was an object of inclination, although both 

128 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 129 

were anything except military leaders. Fear 
lay at the root of the actions of both. Fear 
of the growing strength of the rival, and the 

conviction that the utmost watchfulness was 

1 

the duty of the state made war appear a neces- 
sity to them in that moment when they be- 
lieved that they could thus render futile the 
enemy's plans. At such a time war appeared 
to them no less "lovable" than it had appeared 
to Napoleon the Great. 

"He (Palmerston) believed from the first 
that the pretensions of Russia would have to 
be put down by force of arms, and could not 
be put down in any other way; he believed 
that the danger to England from the aggran- 
dizement of Russia was a capital danger call- 
ing for any extent of national sacrifice to avert 
it. He believed that a war with Russia was 
inevitable, and he preferred taking it sooner 
to taking it later. . . . He understood better 



130 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

than any one else the prevailing temper of the 
English people." 1 

The war was undertaken, in alliance with 
Louis Napoleon for the support of Turkey, by 
an invasion of the Peninsula of Crimea in 
September, 1854. The participation of the 
Kingdom of Sardinia, whose policy was di- 
rected by Cavour, improved the chances of 
the allies. After Sebastopol had fallen (Sep- 
tember 9, 1855), and Tsar Nicholas had died, 
the war began to die down in the face of a 
general unwillingness to carry it on, and Na- 
poleon III brought about peace, which was 
confirmed in his capital city in March, 1856, 
and added to his glory. In England the Cri- 
mean War was remembered unpleasantly, 
among other reasons because it brought to 
light the serious defects of the army's organ- 
ization, especially on the sanitary side. At 

1 McCarthy, II, Chap. 2, p. 208. (Tauchnitz cd.) 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 13 n 

the outset the war had been popular, espe- 
cially since it was a reaction from the pacifi- 
cism connected with the liberal tendencies of 
that time. Soon, however, impatience and 
disappointment became general ; "everybody" 
declared that the campaign was a disrepu- 
table affair. 1 Even after peace was made, 
public opinion remained dissatisfied with the 
manner in which the war was conducted, as 
well as with its political consequences. It had 
to be admitted that those farseeing men who 
had warned strongly against the campaign 
were right At the head of these stood a 
man whose genius and character no one in 



1 In November, 1854, there were 2,000 wounded and sick in 
the hospital at Scutari, and in this whole month only six 
received clean shirts. (Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," p. 
242.) A leading article of the Times, which in those days 
was still written by able and occasionally also by morally 
earnest men, complained, on December 23, 1854, °f " tne in- 
competency, lethargy, aristocratic hauteur, official indifference, 
favor, routine, perverseness and stupidity which revel and 
riot in the camp before Sebastopol." (Ibid., p. 236.) 



i 3 2 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

Great Britain would to-day venture to call 
in question: John Bright. His opponent, 
Lord Salisbury, termed him the greatest 
English orator of his century. Immediately 
after the breaking out of the war, in a series 
of splendid orations in Parliament, Bright at- 
tacked the principle of waging war in order 
to preserve the balance of power, and the sys- 
tem of alliances connected with such a course. 
His reference to the Angel of Death going 
through the land became famous during the 
peace negotiations in Vienna. "The Angel 
of Death has been abroad throughout the 
land; you may almost hear the beating of 
his wings," he exclaimed. The Vienna nego- 
tiations came to grief over the question of 
the neutralizing of the Black Sea; to win this 
point, Palmerston carried on the war for an- 
other year. Fourteen years later (1870) Rus- 
sia declared that it would not longer be bound 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 133 

by this declaration; it tore up the declaration, 
like so much waste paper, and England was 
frustrated. 1 A conference of the powers in 
London (January, 1871) declared this clause 
of the treaty null and void. 

Gladstone, who belonged to the cabinet re- 
sponsible for the war, declared afterward that 
it had been more sentiment than reason that 
had made the war popular, but that it was 
more reason than sentiment that had cast him 
into "the abyss of odium." 2 

We may accept these verdicts. No thought- 
ful man of English nationality could be found 
to-day who would be inclined to attempt to 
justify the Crimean War. 

a The verdict is Trevelyan's. See "Life of John Bright," 
p. 247- 
2 Morley, "Life of Gladstone," I, p. 495. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE IONIAN ISLANDS 

Great Britain had secured for itself a 
strange legacy out of the ruins of the Napo- 
leonic bankruptcy. Under the name of "the 
United States of the Ionian Islands," Corfu, 
Cephalonia, Zakynthos, Paxos, Ithaca and Cy- 
thera had been created a "free and independ- 
ent state" by means of a special treaty between 
Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia, 
and had been placed under the protection of 
the power first named. A Lord High Com- 
missioner was to assume legislative and execu- 
tive functions. "A constitutional charter of 
1 8 17 formed a system of government that soon 
became despotic enough to satisfy Metternich 

134 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 135 

himself." 1 The Lord High Commissioner 
could simply do whatever he wished up to 
1848, when changes were made. 

There had before that been no lack of un- 
rest, and in this troubled year there was an 
uprising in Cephalonia, "which the Lord 
High Commissioner suppressed with cruel 
rigor. Twenty-two people had been hanged, 
three hundred or more had been flogged, most 
of them without any species of judicial in- 
vestigation. The fire-raisings and destruc- 
tion of houses and vineyards were of a fierce 
brutality to match." A regime of terror fol- 
lowed which extended to the other islands. 
By virtue of his "power of high police" the 
Lord High Commissioner was able to put an 
end to the activities of any one, that is, "to tear 
him from his home, his business and his live- 
lihood. This high police power was princi- 

1 Morley, "Life of Gladstone," I, p. 598. 



136 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

pally invoked against editors of newspapers. 
A distasteful editorial was not infrequently- 
punished by deportation to some deserted, 
rocky island, inhabited only by a handful of 
fisher folk." It is a characteristic fact that 
a special report concerning this method of 
government, made by Gladstone, who was sent 
to the islands on a special mission in 1858 to 
introduce reforms, still lay in the archives of 
the Colonial Office as late as the year 1903 
("still existed in the archives of the Colonial 
Office ... a separate report which every- 
body afterwards agreed that it was not ex- 
pedient to publish") . 

First among the reasons for the dissatisfac- 
tion was the wish to become a part of the 
new Kingdom of Greece ; next to this came the 
natural opposition to the tyranny of the British 
governor. At the basis, however, lay also 
sociologic conditions of land-ownership and 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 137 

of agriculture, since the land-owners were 
mainly foreigners (Italians). 

The conflict between the Assembly and the 
vice-royalty gradually became chronic and 
steadily more unpleasant for the central gov- 
ernment in London. Despite the fact that 
Gladstone, in terms of the most utter cant, 
had declared in May, 1861, that the abandon- 
ment of the undertaking would be "a crime 
against the safety of Europe," it nevertheless 
came to pass on March 29, 1864. Thus there 
came to an end a British protectorate which 
is characterized by all commentators and his- 
torians as a chapter of the most extreme despo- 
tism. 

England contented itself in the Mediter- 
ranean with retaining the island of Malta, 
which it took from the French; the French, 
for their part, had no legal title whatever to 
the possession of the island. 



CHAPTER XIII 

JAMAICA 

In a more striking manner than in the 
Ionian Islands did English misrule make it- 
self noticeable in the most important of the 
crown colonies of the West Indies. In 
Jamaica, it is true, slavery had been abolished 
in 1838, but the oppression of the negroes had 
grown heavier, not lighter. In October, 1865, 
the unrest eventuated in disturbances of a na- 
ture more serious than usual, disturbances in 
which the well founded complaints of the 
negroes found expression. And yet the whole 
affair was hardly more than an ordinary riot. 
"So evanescent was the whole movement that 
it is to this day a matter of dispute whether 
there was any rebellion at all . . . or whether 

138 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 139 

the disturbances were not the extemporaneous 
work of a discontented and turbulent mob." 1 
The governor proclaimed military law over 
the whole district with the exception of the 
city of Kingston. In Kingston lived a negro 
named Gordon, who had a small business 
establishment and was a member of the House 
of Deputies of the colony. He had made him- 
self prominent there as an advocate of the 
rights of the negroes, both in and out of the 
House of Deputies, in an energetic but thor- 
oughly lawful manner. He was soon arrested, 
and, since martial law did not prevail in 
Kingston and it would have been necessary to 
bring him before an ordinary civil court, he 
was taken to another district and brought be- 
fore a court-martial composed of two young 
marine officers and a subaltern of infantry. 
Gordon was accused of high treason, found 

1 McCarthy, IV, p. 117 (Tauchnitz ed.). 



140 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

guilty and sentenced to death. As the fol- 
lowing day was Sunday, the judgment was not 
carried out until Monday. 

"The whole of the proceedings connected \ 
with the trial of Gordon were absolutely il- 
legal ; they were illegal from first to last. . . . 
Every step in it was a separate outrage on law. 
But for its tragic end the whole affair would 
seem to belong to the domain of burlesque 
rather than to that of sober history." 1 Mc- 
Carthy goes into details to prove this and sup- 
ports his statements by reference to the criti- 
cism of Presiding Justice Cockburn, who later 
declared that nine-tenths of the testimony ad- 
mitted should have been rejected under all 
rules of the procedure not only of civil but of 
military courts. 

"Meanwhile the carnival of repression was 
going on. The insurrection, or whatever the 

1 McCarthy, IV, p. 121. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 141 

movement was which broke out on October 
nth, was over long before. It never offered 
the slightest resistance to the soldiers. . . . 
An armed insurgent was never seen by them. 
Nevertheless, for weeks after, the hangings, 
the floggings, the burnings of houses were kept 
up. Men were hanged, women were flogged 
merely 'suspect of being suspect.' " 1 Four 
hundred and thirty-nine persons were killed, 
more than 600 flogged, a thousand houses went 
up in flames. Especially effective whips were 
made from piano-wire. A commission ap- 
pointed later declared that "it is painful to 
think that any man should have used such 
an instrument for the torturing of his fellow- 
creatures." 2 The report of the commission 
was given out in April, 1866. The recall of 
the governor followed, although public opin- 



1 Id., p. 123. 

2 McCarthy, IV, pp. 123-4. 



i 4 2 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

ion was divided. Committees for and against 
the methods used against the Jamaicans were 
formed. On both sides appear the best known \ 
names of the period (the mid- Victorian era). 
Supporting the governor were Disraeli, Ten- 
nyson, Kingsley, Carlyle, Dickens, Ruskin; 
cudgels were taken up for the negroes by John 
Bright, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Goldwin 
Smith. The leader of this group was John 
Stuart Mill. Even the governor's party was 
not inclined to justify the cruelties and the ju- 
dicial murder of Gordon — at least, a great 
many would not go so far — but they brought 
all reasons to bear that seemed to demand the 
relentless suppression of the uprising. The 
governor's opponents, on the other hand, laid 
special stress upon the assertion that the upris- 
ing was insignificant and had already been 
fully put down when the reign of terror be- 
gan. Their adversaries replied by exalting 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 143 

the moral qualities of the governor and attack- 
ing the character of Gordon. The renowned 
naturalist, Huxley, "made concerning this af- 
fair the quiet remark that he knew of no law 
authorizing virtuous persons as such to put to 
death less virtuous persons as such." i] 

1 Id., pp. 137-8. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE WAR OF THE SLAVE-OWNERS IN AMERICA 

The traffic in negroes, in which English sea- 
traders had "earned" so many millions, was, 
as is well known, an issue of.the North Ameri- 
can Civil War, even though this phase of the 
conflict did not at first occupy the chief place. 

The English Government was more than 
once upon the point of taking sides on behalf 
of the slave-owners of the South. Public 
opinion — at least among the upper classes, 
who are always in the best position to make 
their opinions prevail — was decidedly on the 
side of the Confederates. This was partly due 
to aristocratic, partly to liberal and free-trade 
grounds. The ethical repulsion to slavery, 
whose most eloquent advocate was the fearless 

144 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 145 

John Bright, found only a weak response or 
no response at all in these circles. The Times 
pointed out that the Bible nowhere expressly 
prohibits slavery. It was confidently believed 
that the North would suffer a crushing defeat. 
"The influential classes were heart and soul 
with the South." In like manner, Napoleon 
III had not the slightest doubt that the cause 
of the South would triumph and that all was 
over forever with the Union. He desired also, 
jointly with the English Government, to sup- 
port the Confederacy through recognition. 
"It is well to bear in mind that there were only 
two European states which entertained this 
feeling and allowed it to be everywhere un- 
derstood." 1 These were England and France. 
Lincoln and his friends had reckoned upon 
the sympathy of the English people and the 
English Government. They were bitterly dis- 

1 McCarthy, III, p. 253. 



146 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

appointed when they learned that their tem- 
porary misfortune was mocked at by English 
statesmen, journalists and clergymen, and gen- 
erally by the "best society," and that all these 
circles openly desired the success of their ene- 
mies. A serious conflict arose from the case of 
the English merchantman Trent, which w T as 
searched by a cruiser of the United States. It 
had envoys of the Southern States on board, 
whom the captain of the cruiser made prison- 
ers. There was great excitement in London 
over the fact that the plebeians of the North- 
ern States had dared to imitate the practice 
followed by the English aristocracy for cen- 
turies — a practice that had led to the system 
of armed neutrality in Europe and to the War 
of 1 812 with the United States. It makes a 
difference whose ox is gored. President Lin- 
coln soon yielded and released the prisoners, 
but the affair left much bitterness, chiefly — 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 147 

according to McCarthy's judgment — as a re- 
sult of the overbearing way in which the Eng- 
lish Government had conducted itself. 

Even granting that England played here 
the role of a defender of the rights of nations, 
there soon came an affair which gave the 
United States grounds for complaint. The 
cruiser Alabama, sailing under the flag of the 
Confederacy, captured one merchant ship 
after another of the North. In doing so, it 
regularly used the English flag to deceive its 
victims. That was its right, under the rules 
of naval warfare. But the Alabama was, as 
a matter of fact, more an English than an 
American ship, and the same was true of 
several other "Confederate" cruisers. Thev 
were built in an English shipyard; their crews 
were almost exclusively English ; the cannons 
and the cannoneers were English, and the lat- 
ter belonged to the royal naval reserve and 



»i 4 8 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

were in the pay of the British Government. 
The British Government had no ears for the 
representations of the Union's envoy, so long, 
at least, as it was believed that the Union 
would be defeated. And this belief persisted 
until the victories of Grant and Meade could 
no longer be kept secret. Reports of these 
victories were received in London with great 
displeasure. "In some of the clubs there was 
positive indignation that such things should 
even be reported." 1 When the victory of the 
North became all too apparent, there was a 
reversal of opinion. The laboring class, under 
the influence of John Bright and certain other 
friends of the Union's cause, had been on the 
side of the North since the issuance of the 
Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln (Sep- 
tember 22, 1862). 

The Alabama affair was for years a subject 

1 McCarthy, III, p. 277. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 149 

of dispute. It was finally submitted to a 
court of arbitration which met in Geneva. 
The verdict of this court (September 15, 
1872) held England liable for the losses occa- 
sioned by the Alabama and two other priva- 
teers. England was forced to pay the United 
States an indemnity amounting, with interest, 
to $15,500,000, for breach of neutrality. 

Thus ended the participation — for such it 
was — of the English Government on behalf of 
the slave-owners of America. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE INDIAN MUTINY 

All these affairs were, in respect of their di- 
rect significance for the British World Em- 
pire, not to be compared with the rebellion in 
India of the years 1857- 1859, which, under 
the name of "the Indian Mutiny," is described 
as a simple revolt of mercenaries, despite the 
fact that it was, or at least became, much more 
than that. It meant the collapse of the rule 
of the East India Company. 

It is still disputed in England whether the 
annexations of Dalhousie and his governmen- 
tal methods were the cause of the uprising or 
not. Most striking was the manner in which, 
in gross violation of treaties solemnly con- 
cluded, he destroyed the Kingdom of Oudh, 

150 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 151 

whence the Bengalese army was mainly re- 
cruited. It is considered certain that this con- 
tributed to an important degree to make the 
British domination hated. Everywhere the 
English had disregarded the religious feelings 
of Hindus as well as of Mohammedans, and 
had done violence to the prejudices of caste. 
Mutinies of the native mercenaries were as old 
as the institution of paid armies itself. The 
fear that they might be employed outside the 
country and thus lose caste worked with par- 
ticular force upon these caste-feelings. The 
petty war which England carried on in 1856 
in Persia added to this fear. There existed, 
moreover, the widespread belief that British 
domination in India was to last for a hundred 
years, and it was in 1757, just 100 years earlier, 
that the great victory in the battle by Plessy 
had given Clive domination over India. 
The history of the mutiny is a history of 



152 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

gruesome atrocities on both sides. Its final 
suppression left an especially deep and terri- 
ble impression upon the feelings of Europe 
because of the English method of carrying out 
the death sentence by binding the victims to 
the muzzles of cannons, which were then 
fired. This humane method of execution had 
already been employed upon the Lipaki in 

1764. 1 

After the mutiny had been suppressed, the 
question as to its causes became a burning 
one. Colonel Malleson, who, supplementing 
Kaye's work, has given us the most thorough 
historical account of the events, answers the 
question by declaring that the principal cause 
was the bad faith of the English Government 
toward the Sepoys. "The Government pun- 
ished the Sepoys for declining to fulfil a con- 

1 As early as 1764 it became necessary to stamp out mutiny 
by blowing thirty Sepoys from the cannon's mouth. Enc. Brit., 
XIV, p. 446. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 153 

tract which the Government had broken," he 
said. This occurred in 1843, and in 1853 "the 
Government most unadvisedly again attempted 
another breach of contract." Lord Dalhousie 
was here the guilty person. His "high-handed 
measures" were crowned by the annexation of 
Oudh. "Of these acts, of the attempt, as I 
have termed it, to disregard the silent growth 
of ages and to force Western ideas upon an 
Eastern people, and in the course of that at- 
tempt to trample upon prejudices and to dis- 
regard obligations, the mutiny was the too 
certain consequence." 1 

1 Malleson, "History of the Indian Mutiny," vol. Ill, pp. 
472-476; preface, p. viii. 



Fourth Division : The Newer Imperialism 
CHAPTER XVI 

EGYPT 

The land of the Pharaohs has been an apple 
of discord between English and French as- 
pirations for conquest since the French Revo- 
lution. These aspirations have served directly 
the ends of economic and financial exploita- 
tion. Neither because of this nor for the sake 
of the colonies themselves has it come to war 
between the two powers since 1815. The Eng- 
lish policy, however, succeeded without war 
in making France more and more dependent 
upon England. It had tamed the once so 
powerful and so feared nation, and threw as 
much fodder into its manger as seemed neces- 
sary to mollify its thirst for blood. 

154 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 155 

French genius and French technic had 
planned and built the Suez Canal. When, in 
1864, Ferdinand de Lesseps appealed to Lord 
Palmerston to stop the opposition which Eng- 
lish diplomacy in Constantinople had organ- 
ized against the project, the Minister declared 
"that in the opinion of the British Govern- 
ment the canal was a physical impossibility, 
that if it was made it would injure British 
maritime supremacy, and that the project was 
merely a device for French interference in the 
East." Assuredly a fine example of the far- 
sightedness and broadmindedness of British 
statesmanship, which still sees in Palmerston 
its typical representative! 

Confirmation by the Sultan of the conces- 
sion was not obtained until 1866. In the 
meantime de Lesseps had organized a stock 
company for the building of the canal, which 
was opened in November, 1869. In 1875 Dis- 



156 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

raeli, in whom the financier and the statesman 
were admirably joined, bought the Khedive's 
176,602 shares of Suez Canal stock. This 
marks the beginning of the financial and ac- 
companying territorial conquest of Egypt by 
England. The state stood at the door of bank- 
ruptcy. To avert it the incubus of Anglo- 
French financial control (the Dual Control) 
was laid upon the land. In the year 1881 
came an uprising, which was also directed 
against the Turks, under the leadership of the 
Egyptian officer Ahmed Arabi. In the words 
of Lord Cromer, who had been in 1878 a 
member of a French commission and who be- 
came later (1884) consul-general and de facto 
governor, it was "a genuine revolt against mis- 
government." The movement was successful ; 
Arabi became Minister of War. This did not 
suit the incubus. English and French ships 
appeared in Alexandria to protect the inter- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 157 

ests of the creditor states; a revolt in that city, 
in which British subjects lost their lives, fur- 
nished the pretext for the bombardment of the 
weak outer forts on July 11, 1882, which re- 
sulted in increasing the anarchy. 

The English admiral did not act entirely 
upon his own responsibility. He did not con- 
cern himself about the law of nations, but back 
of him stood his Government, which now held 
it to be its task to put down the "rebellion." 
The occupation of the land of the Nile fol- 
lowed, which, although the subjugation of 
the Sudan did not come until much later 
(1898), soon amounted to political annexa- 
tion. France, whose Government for years 
insisted that Egypt must be evacuated, was 
eliminated by the entente, and by the treaty 
of 1904, which was equivalent to a partition 
of Northern Africa. "We retain Egypt, you 
seize Morocco. The other Powers have no 



158 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

business either here or there. If Germany 
should perchance concern itself about its com- 
mercial interests in Morocco, Great Britain 
will protect France." 

That was the real meaning of this treaty. 
That a shadow of "right" came into the ques- 
tion neither of the contracting parties has 
dared to assert. The only right was that 
which Shylock claims. 

The statesman Gladstone had written as 
long ago as 1877: "Our first site in Egypt, be 
it by larceny or be it by emption, will be the al- 
most certain egg of a North African empire 
that will grow and grow . . . till we finally 
join hands across the equator with Natal and 
Cape Town, to say nothing of the Transvaal 
and the Orange River on the south, or of 
Abyssinia or Zanzibar to be swallowed by 
way of viaticum on our journey." * 

Gladstone's "Gleanings," IV, p. 357. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 159 

This same Gladstone had, as Prime Minis- 
ter, the task of defending the bombardment 
of Alexandria. John Bright, who was a mem- 
ber of his cabinet, resigned because of the 
affair. Goldwin Smith (from 1858 to 1866 
professor of modern history at Oxford, later 
a resident of Canada) wrote to him: "This 
is a war of bondholders." That was also 
B right's conception. As a member of the cab- 
inet he had authorized the bombardment, and 
the thought oppressed him greatly. The im- 
pulse had come from Joseph Chamberlain, at 
that time still a Radical. A fearless and tire- 
less advocate of decent and upright treatment 
of the Egyptians was Wilfrid Scaven Blunt, 
who had long lived in Egypt and was at the 
center-point of the occurrences of 1882. He 
enjoyed the complete confidence of Arabi, 
whom he describes as a noble enthusiast and a 
true Moslem believer. Bismarck termed 



160 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

Arabi a powerful factor with whom one must 
reckon. General Gordon, whose tragic fate 
in Khartoum was a consequence of the com- 
plications in the Sudan that followed the occu- 
pation of Egypt, wrote a letter of approval to 
Blunt from Cape Town on August 3, 1882, at 
the height of the publicistic excitement of the 
year. The letter makes merry over the secrecy 
of the then Secretary of State, Sir Charles 
Dilke, and says: "Could things have ended 
worse if he had said everything? I think not. 
No more control, no more employees draw- 
ing £373,000 a year — no more influence of 
consuls-general, a nation hating us — no more 
Tewfik — no more interest — a bombarded 
town, Alexandria — these are the results of the 
grand secret diplomacy. ... As for Arabi, 
whatever may become of him individually, he 
will live for centuries in the people. They 
will never become 'your obedient servants' 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 161 

again." 1 Blunt considered it necessary, 
twenty-five years after the occurrences, to sup- 
plement the earlier justifications of his course 
by writing a book, which at the outset con- 
tains many interesting documents, among 
them several letters from Ahmed Arabi. In a 
preface to the book, written in 1895, Blunt 
says : "It may be also that the Egyptian ques- 
tion, though now quiescent, will reassert itself 
unexpectedly in some urgent form hereafter, 
requiring of Englishmen a new examination 
of their position there, political and moral." 
It was to this end that he desired to contribute 
the material he had collected. In a later 
"Foreword," written in 1907, he declares that 
for this purpose "it is necessary that they 
should first have set before them the past as it 
really was, and not as it has been presented to 



1 Wilfrid Scaven Blunt, "Secret History of the English Occu- 
pation of Egypt" (1907), p. 28. 



i6a WARLIKE ENGLAND 

them so long by the fallacious documents of 
their official Blue Books." He refers to the 
fact that Lord Cromer was in Cairo during a 
part of the revolutionary period. He sets for 
himself the task, "to give a complete exposure 
in detail of the whole drama of financial in- 
trigue and political weakness as it was at the 
time revealed to me." A part of the book is 
made up of entries in the author's diary. 
These are very gloomy over the future of his 
country. "England's decay rests upon causes 
far more general than any one man or party 
of men can be responsible for. We fail be- 
cause we are no longer honest, no longer just, 
no longer gentlemen." 1 Blunt evidently be- 
lieves also that at that time the honesty and 
justice of the English policy, even if not per- 
fect, nevertheless stood much higher at an 
earlier period. 

1 Blunt, p. 93. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 163 

His views have naturally been severely at- 
tacked. The acknowledged authority con- 
cerning modern Egypt and the English con- 
quest is the two-volume work of Lord Cromer, 
"Modern Egypt." With all appreciation of 
this excellent work, however, one must do 
Blunt the justice of saying that Cromer is at 
a disadvantage insofar as he did not live in 
Egypt during the critical period. Lord Cro- 
mer brings into the discussion the words of 
Professor Sayce, the renowned authority on 
Semitic languages: "Those who have been 
in the East and have tried to mingle with the 
native population know well how utterly im- 
possible it is for the European to look at the 
world with the same eyes as the Oriental. For 
a while, indeed, the European may fancy that 
he and the Oriental understand one another, 
but sooner or later a time comes when he is 
suddenly awakened from his dream, and finds 



164 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

himself in the presence of a mind which is as 
strange to him as would be the mind of an 
inhabitant of Saturn." 1 

Perhaps for the observation of certain oc- 
currences the rule will also apply that it is 
exactly in the Orient that one must have ex- 
perienced these things in order to understand 
them. Furthermore, Blunt, a wealthy man, 
lived in Egypt as a private gentleman, while 
Cromer (formerly Sir Evelyn Baring) was 
there only under commission of the English 
Government. 

Meanwhile, let us rather reserve our judg- 
ment. We can, however, accept as correct 
those things wherein Cromer and Blunt agree. 
Even Cromer confirms, at the close of his 
work, with respect to Egypt, what was said of 
India soon after the annexation of the Punjab : 



1 Prof. Sayce, "The Higher Criticism and the Monuments," 
p. 55S- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 165 

"We are nowhere beloved." He terms it a 
"lack of gratitude of a foreign nation for 
foreign benefices," but says that such ingrati- 
tude is almost as old as history. In another 
place 1 Cromer himself refers to Seeley's as- 
sertion that "it were very rash to assume that 
any gratitude which may here and there have 
been awakened by our Government can be 
more than sufficient to offset the dissatisfac- 
tion which we have caused among those whom 
we have deprived of respect and influence." 

But dissatisfaction fills not only the former 
rules, but also the rulers. Foreign rule is in 
itself oppressive. It is felt as a burden, even 
when it brings welcome reforms. The 
dissatisfaction is increased and sharpened 
through occurrences showing that the foreign 
rulers unite a lack of understanding of native 

1 Edinb. Review, Jan., 1908, reprinted in "Political and Lit- 
erary Essays" (1913), p. 13* 



ii 66 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

customs with a severity toward crimes grow- 
ing out of an attempt to observe these customs. 
Such an occurrence in Egypt was the case of 
Denishwai. Pigeons may be shot in the Nile 
Land only with the permission of the village 
"omdeh," or head man, for the inhabitants 
look upon their half-tame pigeons as valuable 
property and care for them with great assid- 
uity. The English officers enjoy shooting, 
pigeons. Thus it came to pass that a party of 
fifty English officers, on a march through the 
delta of the Nile, was found shooting pigeons 
and detained. Their weapons were taken 
away from them, a shotgun was discharged 
and wounded several persons, among them a 
woman. A panic followed and the English- 
men were badly beaten. One died later of 
sunstroke, but his death was ascribed to his 
injuries. An extraordinary court, which 
existed for such cases, immediately con- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 167 

demned four Egyptians to death, several to 
long terms of imprisonment and seven to re- 
ceive fifty lashes each. The executions and 
lashings were carried out forthwith. 

Sir Edward Grey had just become Minister 
of Foreign Affairs in the new Liberal govern- 
ment. He not only defended the drastic ver- 
dict, but on July 6th issued a warning against 
further outbreaks of fanaticism in Egypt, 
which might possibly make extreme measures 
necessary. To this warning Mustapha Pasha 
Kamel, the new leader of the Egyptian Na- 
tional party, replied that he, in common with 
his fellow-countrymen, believed that Sir Ed- 
ward Grey had spoken in Parliament for no 
other purpose than to choke off the discussion 
of the dreadful reality of Denishwai. But, he 
asked, is it worthy of England, of the land 
that desires to be the representative of human- 
ity, justice and civilization, to approve and 



i68 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

adopt as its own the acts of those who give to 
the world the melancholy and frightful drama 
of barbarism — the executions of Denishwai? 

The further history of the English usurpa- 
tion in Egypt will perhaps furnish a sharp 
answer to this question. There has been no 
lack of strong opposition and relentless criti- 
cism of Sir Edward Grey in the House of 
Commons and in his own party. 

A word may here be said of the conflicts 
for the Sudan, which formed a part of the 
conquest of Egypt. The tragic fate of the 
noted General Gordon made a deep impres- 
sion upon his contemporaries, and also out- 
side of England. How far his Government 
was responsible for his death does not concern 
us here. For the rest, however, it suffices to 
quote a striking sentence of the great philoso- 
pher, Herbert Spencer, written by him not 
long before his death in 1903. He said : "Love 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 169 

of country is not fostered in me on remember- 
ing that when, after our Prime Minister had 
declared that we were bound in honor to the 
Khedive to reconquer the Sudan, we, after 
the reconquest, forthwith began to administer 
it in the name of the Queen and the Khedive, 
practically annexing it." In the same short 
article we find the sentence: "Contemplation 
of the acts by which England has acquired 
over eighty possessions — settlements, colonies, 
protectorates, etc. — does not arouse feelings of 
satisfaction." * 

1 Article on ''Patriotism," in "Facts and Comments," pp. 88-89. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE BOER WAR 

The conquest of the Transvaal and the 
Orange Free State was for the Boers, who 
were thus robbed of the last abiding places of 
their political independence, the conclusion of 
a "Century of Wrong." (This was the title 
of a pamphlet issued by the former Secre- 
tary of State, F. W. Reitz.) 

The Cape Colony, the center-point of Brit- 
ish dominion in South Africa, was part of 
the booty secured on the occasion of the bat- 
tles against the French Republic and later 
against Napoleon. At first in 1795, then in 
1806 and finally in 18 14 Great Britain laid 
hand upon the old Dutch settlement. "The 
British title to Cape Colony is based upon 
conquest, treaty and purchase. The wishes 

170 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 171; 

of the inhabitants were not consulted and 
among them resentment was felt at the way 
in which their future was thus disposed of," 
reports the Englishman Frank R. Cana. 1 He 
knows perfectly that it was only conquest that 
grounded a real "legal title." 

The repugnance to the English rule, which 
in this case holds in subjection not Asiatics, not 
negroes nor colonists of English descent, but 
descendants of a neighboring European land, 
has increased in proportion as the rule has 
been extended. The events contributing 
thereto are still fresh in the memory. They 
include the defeat of the English at Majuba 
Hill (1881) ; the organization of the African- 
der League (1882) ; the discovery of the dia- 
mond fields and gold mines; the systematic 
procedure of Cecil Rhodes and his Chartered 
Company; the policy of President Kruger; 

1 Encyc. Brit., article "South Africa," XXV, p. 470. 



172 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

the complaints of the Uitlander in the Trans- 
vaal; the forcible invasion of Dr. Jameson 
(the Jameson raid), which Cecil Rhodes, then 
Minister in the Cape Colony, had instigated; 
and the lasting, fearful results of this crime. 
"It cannot be denied that the events accom- 
panying this raid greatly embittered the 
Dutch element in the Cape Colony and in- 
fluenced its later attitude against the Trans- 
vaal Boers." 1 In the year 1897 Sir Alfred 
Milner, a passionately ruthless imperialist, 
was appointed Viceroy for South Africa and 
Governor of the Cape Colony. This meant 
that the policy of force, which had for a time 
been in desuetude, was to be taken up again, 
for back of Milner stood Joseph Chamber- 
lain as Colonial Secretary of State. From 
the very beginning he handled the Transvaal 
Republic as a state bound to obedience, al- 

1 Encyc. Brit, ibid. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 173 

though, under the treaty of 1884, the Trans- 
vaal's standing in international law was only 
in a limited degree one of dependence, after 
it had freed itself from its incorporation in 
1877 into the British Empire. The three- 
year war (1899-1902) followed, with the final 
subjection and regulation of the new colonies, 
the introduction of Chinese mine laborers un- 
der conditions which had the effect of making 
slaves of them, and, finally, the granting of 
self-government and the constitution of the 
South African Union as one of the members 
of the British Empire. 

The war itself brought at first severe de- 
feats for the British army. Later the army 
was able to report victories. "England sent 
during the whole course of the war nearly 
450,000 men to South Africa. Of these, about 
340,000 came from the mother country, the 
rest from India, the colonies and South Africa 



i 7 4 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

itself. The entire fighting force brought into 
the field by the Boers was considerably less 
than 75,000 men." 1 McCarthy is of the opin- 
ion that in view of the relative strength of the 
forces (6 to 1), it were impossible for any 
poet to grow enthusiastic about the victory, 
and that if it had been a war between two 
foreign powers, the sympathy of the English 
folk would most certainly have been on the 
side of the weaker. 

The sympathy of the entire non-English 
civilized world was on the side of the weaker 
to a degree that signified a severe moral de- 
feat for the English world-policy. The cant 
phrases with which the war of conquest was 
launched had no currency outside the English 
borders ; no one accepted them ; they were cast 
back into the faces of Chamberlain, Milner 
and their lieutenants. 

1 McCarthy, "History of Our Own Times," VII, p. 126. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 175 

As long ago as 1850 Queen Victoria "ac- 
quainted the Prime Minister that she could 
not observe without pain that England was 
generally detested." Fifty years later, after 
she had celebrated her diamond jubilee, she 
would have found much more reason for this 
pain. In her place spoke the great men of 
the land, men belonging as well to the Govern- 
ment as to the opposition, although the latter 
did not dare more than a weak protest against 
the war. 

On October 31st, 1900, the Earl of Kim- 
berley referred to the fact that "we are very 
generally hated by foreigners." 

On December 16, 1901, the Earl of Rose- 
bery, Prime Minister in 1895-6, testified that 
"there is no parallel to the hatred and ill- 
will with which we are regarded almost 
unanimously by the peoples of Europe." 

Lord Salisbury himself, the head of the 



176 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

Government, declared on May 9, 1900, "that 
this country has been cast out with reproach 
in almost every literature of Europe." And 
in a later speech (on June 5, 1902), he raised 
the question "whether the root of bitterness 
against England, which he was wholly un- 
able to explain, might not indicate some deep- 
set feeling with which at a later date we shall 
have to reckon." 

In the year 1902 there appeared also the 
interesting work of the Honorable George 
Peel, "The Enemies of England," from which 
the foregoing citations are taken. He thinks 
"that this feeling has been prevalent as a gen- 
eral factor in Europe since the latter half of 
the eighteenth century." 

He is assuredly right, for this hostility has 
always had its seat in France. From the say- 
ing of Minister Cardinal Bernis (about 1750) , 
"England will become the despot of the uni- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 177 

verse," down to the book of Jean de la Pou- 
laine (1902), "The Colossus with Feet of 
Clay," what a record of expressions of French 
repugnance, French ridicule and French 
hatred towards England could be adduced! 

Peel recognized quite correctly the cause 
and kernel of the "profound, widespread and 
old standing" hostile feeling which England 
has brought upon itself on the Continent. He 
saw it in the fact that England's policy, "at a 
certain stage of its progress" had regularly 
opposed itself to every power "that aspired to 
the primacy of the world." "Apart from all 
bitterness," he said, "this remains the real mat- 
ter between us and our Continental critics, 
and to the question whether this resistance of 
ours was justified we must content ourselves 
to stand or fall upon the answer given by the 
views of impartial minds." 

When he answers then that "our statesmen 



178 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

have continuously sought our safety, which in 
every important epoch of European affairs 
has been identical with the safety of Europe," 
this is not cant (to which this author is not 
addicted), but an undependable generaliza- 
tion from the affairs of Louis XIV and Napo- 
leon, of whom the latter in reality fought more 
against the supremacy of England than for 
the supremacy of France. 

To return to the Boer War, this conflict was 
decided upon solely because of the imperial- 
istic interests of England, and behind these 
stood, as always, the powerful commercial 
interests. 

W. H. Lecky, the historian, politically Con- 
servative and Unionist, wrote in 1900 a pam- 
phlet entitled "Moral Aspects of the South 
African War." It is throughout a defense 
of the English policy and a severe attack upon 
the government of the Transvaal. Yet Lecky 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 179 

finds himself compelled to make the following 
admissions : 

"I am far from contending that our con- 
duct in other respects was impeccable. There 
are several pages in the history of the early 
English dealings in the Transvaal which are 
by no means to our credit. A mining popula- 
tion like that which had its center in Johan- 
nesburg is never of the most desirable order, 
and in the present generation financial specu- 
lation has mixed far too much, both in Eng- 
land and in Africa, with South African poli- 
tics. Party spirit runs violently at the Cape, 
and if there was a Dutch party aiming at com- 
plete ascendancy, there was also an English 
party which was violent, arrogant and unscru- 
pulous. The raid, though it was undoubtedly 
preceded by gross misgovernment, was both 
a great folly and a great crime. Our Govern- 
ment had nothing to say to it, and the men 



i8o WARLIKE ENGLAND 

who took part in it were tried and punished ; 
but a section of the British public — shame- 
fully misled by a very important part of the 
British press — adopted an attitude towards it 
which added largely and most naturally to the 
deep distrust of England that prevailed in the 
Transvaal." 

Lecky declares it is undoubtedly true that 
Rhodes prepared and planned the raid. 

Herbert Spencer's verdict is short and 
sharp. He says: "After promising, through 
the mouths of two colonial ministers, not to 
interfere in the internal affairs of the Trans- 
vaal, we proceeded to insist on certain elec- 
toral arrangements, and made resistance the 
excuse for a desolating war." * 

But the sharpest criticism of those respons- 
ible for the Boer War came from the British 
nation itself, when, three years after the end 

1 "Facts and Comments," p. 89. 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 181 

of the war, it placed the reins of government 
by a mighty majority in the hands of those 
men who, like Campbell Bannerman, Lloyd 
George and Asquith, had protested loudly 
against the war and against the manner in 
which it was carried on. At the time they 
were abused and ridiculed as "Little Eng- 
landers" and "Pro-Boers." 

Whether it was in accordance with the will 
of this majority that Sir Edward Grey became 
Foreign Minister in the new Liberal cabinet 
may be doubted with good reason. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

PERSIA 

Under the title, "The Strangling of Per- 
sia," a distinguished American public man 
has pictured the modern history of this coun- 
try. Mr. Morgan Shuster was as no other 
man in a position to give an impartial and 
faithful report of the events which he charac- 
terizes concisely in this title. 

In the endeavors to subjugate and exploit 
Persia, and to these ends to throw it into con- 
fusion and anarchy, Russia played the leading 
role throughout almost the entire nineteenth 
century. Great Britain, drawn into Afghanis- 
tan through its rule of might over India, was 
in turn compelled to direct its eyes toward 
Persia. Violent points of friction developed 

182 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 183 

as early as 1839, and came to a declaration of 
war on November 1, 1856. The question at 
issue was the possession of Herat (in Afghan- 
istan), which England denied to the Shah. 
From this time on, England — after a quickly; 
won victory — above all laid claim to the ex- 
clusive commercial supremacy over the Per- 
sian Gulf. At the beginning of the new cen- 
tury (1902-1907) the rivalry between Eng- 
land and Russia first became acute, but a com- 
promise followed during the confusion of the 
Persian revolution, which was immediately 
followed by the proclamation of a modern 
constitution. On August 31, 1907, the Anglo- 
Russian convention was signed, which in na- 
ture and effect amounted to a partition of 
Persia. 

Sir Edward Grey advocated this treaty of 
compromise in the House of Commons. A- 
London periodical, which enjoys great respect 



1 84 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

because of its genius and frank courage in 
openly criticizing any action of the govern- 
ment, had this to say of the affair: 

"Sir Edward Grey has not merely gone out 
of his way to make a wholly gratuitous defense 
of the action which Russia is now taking; he 
has explicitly sanctioned and adopted the 
stealthy extension of the Anglo-Russian com- 
pact which underlies the whole of the Russian 
aggression. So far as the wording of that 
treaty goes, it provides for the division of Per- 
sia into economic spheres, within which each 
power binds itself not to compete with the 
other for concessions. We have never thought 
that arrangement compatible with the integ- 
rity and independence of Persia, and we have 
always argued that it would be stretched, and 
must be stretched, into a political partition. 
At length the avowal has been made, and 
made apparently without any consciousness 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 185 

that the terms of the compact have been left 
behind. The word 'political' has been subtly 
introduced by Sir Edward Grey to describe 
the character of the particular interests which 
each power reserves to itself in its own sphere. 
When once that word is used, the independ- 
ence of Persia is gone and its partition vir- 
tually accomplished. 

"But if a little country may be invaded by a 
great power because a foreign official in its 
service has ventured to write a reasoned and 
temporate letter to the Times, in reply to edi- 
torial attacks of semi-official British and Rus- 
sian newspapers, we must revise all our con- 
ceptions of international intercourse. ... It is 
a case of the wolf and the lamb, so flagrant 
and so cynical that one is hardly tempted to 
analyze it further." 

And in a second article the same publicist 
makes the following observations concerning 



186 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

the affair, which are to-day of most especial 
interest: 

"Disastrous and foolish though we believe 
this policy to be, we do not call it unintelli- 
gible. It is a consequence, and one of the 
worst consequences, of Sir Edward Grey's 
European policy. One simple and elementary 
principle has governed it from the first — his 
dread lest this or the other power might be 
drawn into what he has called 'the orbit' of 
German diplomacy. Year in, year out, we 
have been paying, chiefly in other people's 
goods, for the satisfaction of keeping certain 
powers from coming to any intimate under- 
standing with Germany. The French side 
of the account is represented by the Moroccan 
transaction and its sequels. To Russia we 
have given a free hand over the greater part 
of Persia. It was a large price to pay for 
anything." 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 187 

The author sums up his opinion of the Eng- 
lish foreign policy in the following sentences: 

"We are playing a continental role without 
continental resources, and from a great ambi- 
tion based on unsuitable means there must 
issue in the end either the humiliation of a 
surrender or the disaster of a defeat." 1 

a The Nation. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE WORLD WAR OF 1914 

On the evening of August 2d the Belgian 
Government faced the necessity of deciding 
whether it would take sides with Germany or 
France. But Belgium's decision had been 
made long before. Belgium was a member 
of the entente cordiale between France and 
Great Britain. 1 This entente ostensibly 
meant an assurance of English support for 
France. In reality it meant that France and 
Belgium had become tools of the English 
policy. Belgium was, in the words of a Swed- 
ish military writer, "the United Kingdom's 

a The documents showing that Belgium had long ceased to 
be a neutral State have now (January, 1915) been published 
in a pamphlet which bears the title, "Die belgische Neu- 
tralitat" (The Belgian Neutrality, published by George 
Stilke, Berlin). 

188 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 189 

outpost on the Continent." 1 It played this 
role in the guise of an independent State whose 
neutrality had been guaranteed in 1839 by the 
European concert, a concert in which Great 
Britain played first violin. 

Trusting to English and French support, 
the Belgian Government placed itself in op- 
position to the request of the German Govern- 
ment that it assume a friendly neutrality and 
permit the entry into Belgian territory of Ger- 
man troops. 

The border was crossed on August 4th. 
The German Government had in its posses- 
sion dependable reports over the projected 
advance of French troops along the Meuse, 
in the district of Givet-Namur — reports that 
left room for no doubts concerning France's 
intention to advance through Belgian territory 
against Germany. The German Empire was 

1 Svenska Dagblad, October 15, 1914. 



190 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

at war with Russia and France, and its ally, 
Austria-Hungary, also had Servia as an oppo- 
nent. In Petersburg — according to a report 
of the Belgian charge d'affaires to the Belgian 
Minister of Foreign Affairs — there was a firm 
conviction even before July 30th — indeed, the 
assurance had been received — that England 
would stand by France. "This support" — 
writes the Belgian envoy — "is of extraordi- 
nary weight and has contributed not a little to 
give the war party the upper hand." 

Of all the documents concerning the cause 
of the war that have become known, this is the 
one that illuminates the situation the most 
sharply. 

England's participation in the World War 
was assured in all circumstances. Indeed, it 
was a matter of course, for even though Eng- 
land was, in the sequence of events, the last 
factor, it was the first factor in bringing these 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 191 

events about. No other State had such a tre- 
mendous material interest as England in tram- 
pling the German power down through a 
European coalition. For this reason the neu- 
trality of England could have been secured 
through no concession, not even through the 
concession not to violate the Belgian neutral- 
ity. 

Only when it is willing to injure itself does 
a belligerent power make concessions to a 
power whose hostility is assured. 

For this reason it was surely, in the words 
of the message of the Secretary of State on 
August 2d, "a requirement of self-preservation 
for Germany to anticipate an attack by 
France." As strongly as moral grounds de- 
manded that Belgium's neutrality be not vio- 
lated, the position of self-defense against a 
mighty coalition of powers in which Germany 
found itself not only justified, but demanded 



192 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

the breach of an international treaty which 
was nothing but a weapon in the hands of an 
enemy who would have been an enemy under 
all circumstances. 

This breach was followed immediately by 
the English declaration of war. The British 
Ambassador was "instructed to say that His 
Majesty's Government feel bound to take all 
steps in their power to uphold the neutr lity 
of Belgium and the observance of a treaty to, 
which Germany is as much a party as our- 
selves." (Correspondence respecting the Eu- 
ropean Crisis, Cd. 7467, No. 159.) 

That England was in all circumstances the 
enemy of the German Empire is proved by the 
memorandum which Sir Edward Grey on Au- 
gust 2d — that is to say, before any decision 
concerning Belgium — handed to the French 
Ambassador. (Correspondence respecting 
the European Crisis, No. 148.) In this it is 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 193 

said: "I am authorized to give you an assur- 
ance that, if the German fleet comes into the 
Channel or through the North Sea to under- 
take hostile operations against French coasts 
or shipping, the British fleet will give all the 
protection in its power." 

In the telegram in which Sir Edward Grey 
communicated this declaration to the British 
Ambassador in Paris it is said: 

"I pointed out that we had very large ques- 
tions and most difficult issues to consider, and 
that Government felt they could not bind 
themselves to declare war upon Germany 
necessarily if war broke out between France 
and Germany to-morrow, but it was essential 
to the French Government, whose fleet had 
long been concentrated in the Mediterranean, 
to know how to make their dispositions with 
their north coast entirely undefended. We 
therefore thought it necessary to give them 



194 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

this assurance. It did not bind us to go to 
war with Germany unless the German fleet 
took the action indicated, but it did give a 
security to France that would enable her to 
settle the disposition of her own Mediterra- 
nean fleet." 

Undoubtedly it would have suited Sir Ed- 
ward Grey and his friends better if they could 
have been sure of the defeat of Germany with- 
out risking a single British ship or British 
cannon. If they could have so prescribed for 
Germany the manner in which it should carry 
on war, if they could have so inspired it with 
fear that the failure of its campaign was cer- 
tain, then, of course, England would have 
been glad to remain neutral, and would have 
filled its mouth with still more beautiful cant 
phrases than it now does over freedom and 
justice, over its mission to protect the smaller 
nations — phrases calculated for those who are 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 195 

simple enough to mistake the disguised wolf 
for a pious sheep. 

The true state of affairs will not always re- 
main concealed even in England. 

Nor has it ever been wholly concealed. Be- 
fore the cabinet reached its decision, the voices 
of the most important men had been raised 
against a war on behalf of Servia and Russia 
against the German Empire and Austria. One 
needs only to recall flaming articles of the 
^Manchester Guardian , the New Statesman, 
and even of the ministerial Westminster Ga- 
zette. One recalls the declaration of the Ox- 
ford professors, who termed such a war a 
crime against culture; above all may be re- 
called the withdrawal of the three cabinet 
members, Morley, Trevelyan and Burns, each 
a name whose weight would outbalance a 
dozen Churchills and Greys if genius and 
political highmindedness could be weighed. 



196 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

One can recall the manifesto of the Independ- 
ent Labor Party, which declared in clear and 
true words: "England is not at war for op- 
pressed nations or on behalf of the Belgian 
neutrality." One recalls the courageous inter- 
vention of the upright Scotch labor leader, 
Keir Hardie, in the House of Commons. One 
recalls further the proclamation of the former 
leader of the Labor Party, Ramsay Macdon- 
ald, and the manifesto, already referred to, of 
Bernard Shaw (Common Sense About the 
War). And finally, H. N. Brailsford has but 
recently directed attention to the fact that the 
report of the Belgian charge d'affaires in St. 
Petersburg, of which we have already re- 
marked that it throws the clearest light upon 
the situation, has been utterly suppressed in 
England. Brailsford says: "A word could 
have been spoken which would have preserved 
peace, England's word to Russia — 'If you mo- 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 197 

bilize against Germany before all resources of 
diplomacy have been exhausted, we shall con- 
sider you as the assailant and will not use a 
man or a ship to help you.' Sir Edward Grey 
did not say this word." 

Sir Edward Grey could not say this word 
because it was his secret wish that Germany 
should be forced into war, even though it 
would have pleased him better if Germany 
could have suffered a severe defeat without 
British help. Because he and his associates 
believed that only British help could make 
this defeat certain, he promised it, and he 
was not in the position to state a condition 
under which Germany could have been as- 
sured of Britain's neutrality. 

Our consideration of modern English his- 
tory teaches us to look upon the English peo- 
ple as a genuine Epimetheus. There is never 



198 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

a time when it cannot say to itself: "Sad 
delusion vanished like mist." * Shame and 
repentance took its place. The cultured Eng- 
lishman thinks with shame of the piracy, mur- 
der and arson that have established his colo- 
nial empire. He recalls with shame and re- 
pentance the slave trade, once praised as a 
pillar of the empire. He knows that the con- 
quest of India proceeded along ways paved 
with treachery and broken promises, with 
cruelties of every variety; he knows that sys- 
tematic mistreatment caused the loss of the 
Thirteen Colonies, which grouped themselves 
around the Stars and Stripes, and that the 
same narrow commercial spirit caused his an- 
cestors to take the part of the emigrants 
against the French Republic. Even the six 
professors of modern history at Oxford, with 
their feeble knowledge of history, know that 

1 Epimetheus, in Goethe's "Pandora." 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 199 

England did Denmark a great injustice in 
1807. Only with the bitterest regret does 
every informed man in England remember 
the catastrophe in Afghanistan in 1837-41; 
the very name of the Opium War recalls 
shame and lasting reproach. And the Cri- 
mean War? We have seen that no intelligent 
person now defends it, no matter how greatly 
it was rejoiced at in the beginning, and that 
it has been plunged into the depths of odium. 
Only a few know of the despotism with which 
the small states of the Ionian Islands and Ja- 
maica were kept in check, but no one familiar 
with the facts will dare to assert that England 
there defended right, or even freedom. Only 
with repugnance does the Englishman of to- 
day permit himself to be reminded that his 
fathers and grandfathers were on the side of 
the slave-owners against Lincoln, while all 
Germany — which then included Austria — 



200 WARLIKE ENGLAND 

never for a moment wavered in its sympathies, 
and in the States themselves many thousands 
of German men and youth enthusiastically 
took up arms against the institution of slavery. 
That the Indian Mutiny was due to the grave 
guilt of the East India Company and of the 
governor who ruled it is a historical fact 
which is proved by the dissolution of this com- 
pany which immediately followed. 

The records of the events of more modern 
times — of the conquest of Egypt, the bom- 
bardment of Alexandria, the bloody verdict 
against the peasants of Denishwai, the Boer 
War and the strangling of Persia — are not yet 
closed. But even now it requires a great as- 
surance to assert that these events, so far as 
they have become known, inure to the honor 
of the English world-policy. One may say 
that, in respect also of these machinations and 
campaigns, a feeling of shame and penitence 



WARLIKE ENGLAND 201 

has become almost universal among right- 
thinking people of the United Kingdom. 

There is, therefore, adequate reason for be- 
lieving that this feeling in regard to the 
causes of the present World War will continue 
to increase and gradually reach a height con- 
sonant with the terrible magnitude of these 
events. 

From all that has been here presented in "* 
unprejudiced manner, based upon the testi- 
mony of important and noted English authors, 
we may draw the conclusion that the con- 
science of the English people, when it is chal- 
lenged to give a verdict on the English world- 
policy and its motives, will not be able to 
avoid finding them guilty and sentencing them 
to everlasting condemnation. 



CONCLUSION 

When Theseus came to Crete, the Minotaur 
was brought before him. 

"You have devoured little children and 
youths," said Theseus. 

The Minotaur trembled. 

"I devoured the little children out of love," 
he answered. 

"And the youths?" asked Theseus. 

"The youths out of ethical motives." 

Theseus drew his sword and struck off the 
monster's head. 

The Minotaur of modern times is the Brit- 
ish world policy. 



202 



THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR 

By Karl Federn 

A lucid presentation of the underlying causes of the European conflict and its 
meaning to the nations involved. By documents and other recently discovered 
evidence, Mr. Federn makes out his brief — that England, scenting danger to her 
own prosperity in the development of German science and inventive genius, sought 
by the aid of alliances with France and Russia to crowd Germany out of the markets 
of the world. The result of this policy, furthered by ambitious politicians, resulted 
in this war, disastrous to this isolation program. Written dispassionately, this 
book aims to disseminate a correct idea of the origin of this titanic struggle. 

izmo. Cloth bound* $1.00 Net. 

THE TRAGEDY OF BELGIUM 

By Richard Grasshoff 

A clear statement of facts concerning the alleged atrocities of German soldiers 
in Belgium, giving for the first time in popular form reports and documents refuting 
absolutely the charges spread through the press of the world by British and Belgian 
interests. Deceived by the government, the controlled Belgian press inflamed the 
ignorant populace to franctireur barbarities which compelled the German Army to 
take stern measures to protect i ts line of march. The creation of the Belgian Inves- 
tigation Commission, within three days after hostilities began, set a premium upon 
the discovery and reporting of such activities, and the skilful coloring and publica- 
tion of such instigated reports became a formidable instrument in the war policy 
of England. This compact narrative of what actually occurred constitutes one of 
the most astounding revelations of the hour, and is bound to work tremendous 
changes in the world's judgment of the events immediately following the outbreak 
of the war. 

l2tno. Cloth. With Appendix and Illustrations. $1.00 Net. 

WARLIKE ENGLAND AS SEEN 
BY HERSELF 

By Ferdinand Tonnies 

Professor at the University of Kiel; Advising Editor of the American 
Journal of Sociology, etc. 

A scholarly and comprehensive indictment of England's overweening lust for 
world-conquest. Out of the mouths of her own statesmen and historians she is 
convicted of the appalling crimes of piracy, murder and arson in the establishment 
of her vast colonial empire for the benefit of her so-called upper classes. The hor- 
rors of her once vaunted slave trade, the conquest of India, the outbreaks in Afghan- 
istan, the conquest of Egypt and the outrages of the Boer war have become a lasting 
shame. Her struggle to preserve the balance of power among nations for her own 
selfish advantages is set forth in this volume as the active determining factor in 
the world's greatest war. 

Cloth Bound. $1.00 Net. 



Germany and England 

By GENERAL FRIEDRICH von BERNHARDI 



General Bernhardi shows that the great European War was 
forced by England — that Germany is not to blame. He stoutly 
maintains that England as well as France and Belgium violated 
the neutrality agreement before ever a German soldier set foot on 
Belgian soil; and that world-power, not world-dominion, is the 
key-note of Germany's activity. As he sees it, Germany has always 
fought for liberty, while England is righting for oppression. Ger- 
many desires only a free, autonomous development alongside the 
other great cultural nations of the world. And if Germany wins 
in the great struggle, there is not even the shadow of menace to the 
United States in Germany's attitude. This is the first book General 
Bernhardi has written since the War began, and it is also in a sense 
a reply to Professor Cramb's attack on his writings. Nowhere 
can there be secured a clearer understanding of the German position 
in the present war than by a perusal of this extraordinarily direct 
and pertinent contribution to war literature. 

"Written in admirable English and possessing a style of argument which is 
intensely interesting and convincing." — Baltimore Sun. 

"The American public will surely appreciate 'Germany and England.'"— 
St. Louis ^Republic. 

"The clear logic, unfaltering courage and insistent disposition to call a spade a 
spade, that marked von Bernhardi's other books, are apparent also in this latest 
rejoinder to his world critics." — Phila. North American. 

"As a protest from this much-discussed German general and writer, this book 
is exceedingly interesting." — Boston Advertiser. 

" General Von Bernhardi's book will claim first place in the attention of American 
students of the War." — Springfield Republican. 

"A brilliantly written book and most informing as a human document." — Phila. 
Ledger. 

"General Friedrich von Bernhardi, who has caused more newspaper discussion 
and magazine comment than all the other war writers together, has written another 
book, 'Germany and England,' which is well worth reading." — Sacramento Union. 

" For one desiring to know the German viewpoint, nothing more succinct and 
stronger can be had than this volume by Bernhardi." — Boston Herald. 

12mo, Cloth Bound. With Portrait of the Author. 
50 cents Net. 

G. W. DILLINGHAM CO., Publishers, New York 



"fnp\HE ART OF THE PHOTOPLAY" is a condensed 
textbook of the technical knowledge necessary for 
the preparation and sale of motion picture scenarios. 
More than 35,000 photoplays are produced annually in the 
United States. The work of staff-writers is insufficient 
Free-lance writers have greater opportunities than ever 
before, for the producing companies can not secure enough 
good comedies and dramas for their needs. The first edi- 
tion of this book met with unusual success. Its author, now 
the Director General of Productions for me Beaux Arts Fum 
Corporation, is the highest paid scenario writer in the world, 
as well as being a successful producing manager. Among his 
successes were the scenarios for the spectacular productions: 
"Robin Hood,** '"The Squaw Man," "The Banker's Daughter," 
"The Fire King," "Checkers," "The Curse of Cocaine" and 
"The Kentucky Derby*" 

WHAT THOSE WHO KNOW HAVE SAID: 

"In my opinion, based upon six years' experience producing motion pictures, 
Mr. Eustace Hale Ball is the most capable scenario writer in the business today.** 
(Signed) W. F. Haddock, 

Producing Director with Edison, Eclair, All Star, and 
now President, Mirror Film Corporation. 

"Mr. Ball has thoroughly grasped present day and future possibilities of the 
Moving Picture business with relation to the opportunities for real good work by 
scenario writers.'- (Signed) P. Kimberlby, 

Managing Director, Imperial Film Company, Ltd., 

London, England. 

"To those who wish to earn some of the money which the moving picture 
folk disburse, Eustace Hale BaH proffers expert and valuable advice. " 

New York Times Review oh- Books. 

"BalFs Art of the Photoplay puts into concrete form, with expert simplicity, 
the secrets of writing photoplays which appeal to the millions of Americans 
who attend the theatres and the producers can not buy enough of such plays to 
satisfy the exhibitors." (Signed) Robert Lee Macnabb, 

National Vice-President, Motion Picture 

Exhibitor's League of America. 

"You have succeeded in producing a clear and helpful exposition of the sub- 
ject." (Signed) Wjul R. Kane, 

Editor of "The Editor Magazine.?? 

12 mo. Cloth bound, $1.00 Net. 

G. W. DILLINGHAM CO., Publishers NEW YORK 



183 92 












I | 



>i 



- 



2 



